Friday, May 19, 2006
Four Cultures of the West (and a few others thrown in for good measure)
Last night I ran across a fascinating little book: John O'Malley's Four Cultures of the West. O'Malley is a Jesuit Renaissance historian whose previous book examined the transition from Scholasticism to Humanism during the Renaissance. O'Malley's love for the entire intellectual history in Europe is obvious from a brief perusal of the book. O'Malley identifies four main tendencies or "cultures" within the West that have by and large determined both the content and style of intellectual inquiry, the curricula of educational institutions, and the worship services in churches in Europe during the past several hundred years. These include the prophetic, academic, humanistic, and artistic cultures.
1. Prophetic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Hebrew prophets, Paul, Pope Gregory VII, Luther, Pascal, MLK
The prophetic culture is a culture of protest and alienation from the dominant powers in society. They want to unmask the problems of the status quo in the name of justice and freedom. It's a culture of fundamentalism and martyrdom that brooks no compromise with other points of view. Its utopian vision of promising things to come is beyond reasoned argument. Hence its discursive style is one of manifesto, proclamation, and command. But on the other hand it also employs lamentation and a logic of paradox in its goal of radical social transformation and revolution.
2. Academic/Professional Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, Freud, Einstein
The academic culture employs instensive analytic questioning in its search for Truth. But this is a search that can never be fully satisfied. It looks for clear-cut definitions and employs a deductive form of reasoning, moving from principles to certain truth. Its logical and rigourous style of inquiry is fully at home in institutional settings such as the lecture-format classroom, lab, library, and research institute that the iconoclastic prophetic culture would not have tolerated. Its full flowering occured during the medieval Scholastic period. Scholastic academic institutions became the blueprint for the modern form of the university. It's a labor-intensive culture whose practitioners take years to master specialized forms of professionalized knowledge.
3. Humanistic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Homer, Isocrates, Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Montaigne, Erasmus, Goethe
Unlike the institutional embodiment of the academic culture in the university, this culture of belles lettres finds itself at home in the humanistic/liberal arts secondary school. It focuses on the role of good literature in education: poetry, drama, history, and rhetoric. If the prophetic culture focuses on Justice and Freedom and the academic culture searches for the Truth, the main goal of this culture is the Good. Like the prophetic culture, this culture seeks societal change, but unlike the more intolerant approach of the prophetic, the humanistic seeks common ground and compromise. It's more inward-looking: it encourages us to look inside ourselves and see our dilemmas through the lens of others' egos as communicated in literature. It aims at a broad civic responsibility that is sparked by the moral imagination. Unlike the deductive, linear logic of the academic, it employs a more emotional, circular form of reasoning. It relishes ambiguity and layers of meaning in its placid rumination of fundamental values.
4. Artistic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Phidias, Michelangelo, Bach, Wagner, Hollywood/Broadway musicals, Geary
Unlike the three other cultures, this culture does not employ words; rather, it uses dance, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, and spectacle to communicate itself through ritual performances, rites, and ceremonies. It primarily uses the power of the image in pursuit of its main goal--the Beautiful. As a Jesuit, O'Malley thinks this culture is most fully realized in the pageantry of the Catholic mass. The mass is a kind of play or "deep play." I wonder if O'Malley would think of film or even the visual interface of the internet as an heir to this iconic culture?
O'Malley doesn't see these cultures as mutually exclusive. In fact, many artists seem to represent more than one. Shakespeare, for example, employs the language of the humanistic in the service of the artistic culture's dramatic spectacle. Martin Luther's "Here I stand, I can do no other" is clearly in the tradition of the prophetic, but his German translation of the Bible seems to be in the humanistic tradition. Also, his many hymns contributed powerfully to the reformed version of Protestant religious service.
I think O'Malley's idealism masks the prevalent role of two other tendencies at play in Western culture (maybe they wouldn't qualify as cultures under O'Malley's definition?): the athletic and bureaucratic cultures. Also, I think there is another dimension of the religious not captured in the prophetic--the other-worldly focus of the spiritual culture. And the basis of all these other cultures is the agricultural--the one that feeds everyone else. Here are my proposed descriptions of these four other cultures and a few others for extra measure. . .
5. Athletic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Navratilova, Comaneci
O'Malley places the agonistic spectacles that originated in the Greek Olympic Games, refined in the Roman gladiatorial spectacles, and finding modern fulfillment in the world of professional sports under the aegis of the artistic culture. But I would argue that the glorification of the human figure in sporting contests is of an entirely different order than the artistic. While it, too, relies heavily on the logic of the spectacle, unlike the artistic emphasis on the Beautiful its primary value is a glorification of Strength. In the artistic there are usually not winners and losers, but in the athletic culture so much hangs upon the ultimate result. Unlike the high-falutin' tendencies of the academic, humanistic, and artistic cultures, the athletic culture speaks much more to the man on the street. The focus of many a small town seems to be primarily the performance of its high school football team. It seems like an important translation of the figure of the Warrior into a more socially acceptable form. (More Sparta than Athens)
6. Bureaucratic Culture
Given the faceless quality of this culture there are no good paradigmatic individuals to help us understand it better, but two individuals have helped us diagnose it in its modern form: Max Weber and Kafka
If the prophetic emerges in Jerusalem and the academic, humanistic, artistic, and athletic cultures originate in Athens and Greece, then the bureaucratic hearkens back to the hierarchial organization of society in Egypt and the Persian satrapies. The primary value of this culture is Order. Hence, it seems to be in direct conflict most acutely with the prophetic culture, which seeks to overturn the established power structure. It's a culture of the established priest-caste, whether this "priest" class is religious as in ancient Egypt or secular as in today's modern nation-states or multinational corporations. Although it's not my favorite culture, it does seem a necessary one in order to administer a complex society. Its scribes and clerks are often in alliance with certain professionals that come out of the academic culture--namely attorneys.
7. Mystical/Spiritual Culture
Pardigmatic Individuals: Buddha, Hildegard of Bingen, Fox, Rumi, Blake, Emerson
The prophetic culture leaves out an important dimension of religion better captured in the figure of the mystic. If a would-be prophet directly confronts the powers-that-be in his/her search for Justice and Freedom, a mystic seems to seek a profound tranquility in the form of a divine Vision. Can you have a culture of one? Each mystic seems wholly unique and individual, so maybe it makes no sense to talk of a spiritual culture? But the ancient tradition of the shaman, divine seer, and oracle seems ill-served by O'Malley's typology. Like the artistic culture, it's often an iconic imagination, but this is so inward-looking that it seems of an entirely other order than the artistic.
8. Military Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Caesar, Napoleon, Patton
Many of my students have been or are currently in different branches of the military, and it is amazing to me how this culture has fundamentally affected how these individuals think. Much like the academic culture, it lends itself to a very hierarchical and regimented view of the world. But if Truth is the academics’ main value, then the military culture’s would be Discipline, Camaraderie, and, ultimately, Victory. I was looking at a book the other day on the proto-Indo-Europeans, and one of the things that struck me about this anthropologist’s guesses as to what this group was like was how their society might have been structured in a fundamentally similar way as the military still is. Or at least many societies that speak an Indo-European language now seem to be organized in similar ways. Not having been in the military myself, this is often a way of thinking that feels alien to me and am not sure I can explain it well. (My personal religious affiliation tends toward the Unitarian and Quaker, so many of my values are not shared by this culture.) Heart-breaking to me are papers my students who have served in Iraq write about their experiences there.
9. Agricultural Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Cato, On Farming; Virgil, Georgics; Ideal of the Jeffersonian citizen-farmers; George Washington Carver; Frances Moore Lappe
I'm not down-to-earth enough to discuss this culture. It's main goal is the Fruitful and Productive, all the better to feed all the rest of the cultures with. It takes a specialized form of know-how type knowledge to be successful as a farmer. Maybe a sub-set of the humanistic culture, especially with its association of figures such as Virgil or Jefferson? I don’t think this culture is best represented by written treatises, though. It takes an intuitive sense of how to make best use of domesticated plants and animals for human benefit. Some people just seem more in tune with animals. (I vaguely remember a PBS show that featured a woman who was autistic who seemed to have a special affinity in working with cattle.)
10. Commercial/Trading Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: whoever “invented” money; Bill Gates (?)
Perhaps this belongs with Agricultural and Manufacturing (see following) cultures as a larger all-encompassing Economic/Business Culture. This branch deals mostly with the trade and distribution of goods and services. I’m astounded by the number of my students who plan to go into some aspect of business. I guess that’s where there are jobs—or at least that’s the common perception. Even my niece majors in Marketing. Sometimes I find it difficult to engage in meaningful conversation with folks emerged in this culture because of our conflict in values. Their fundamental value is Profit; whereas my fundamental values lie in the restless academic search for Truth or the humanistic goal of the Good. Because of its ubiquitous role in American culture, I often begin my writing classes with a critical analysis of the logic of advertising, It’s a language anyone who has ever watched a few hours of TV fully understands, which often seeks to short-circuit our critical faculties, which makes for an interesting collision of ideals! I find it interesting that the world’s richest man is Bill Gates, not someone who was an innovator in computer technology but was instrumental in distributing these technologies in a mass way. (I wouldn’t be able to write to you in this format if it weren’t for these series of innovations. But this is a culture that also has deep roots in our society. Jesus wasn’t fond of the money-changers in the Temple, but without their current incarnation would we be able to live the life most of us have become accustomed to living?
11. Manufacturing/Industrial Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: James Watt, Frederick Taylor, Ford
This culture is similar to the agricultural culture in that it is best represented not in written works but in an everyday, almost intuitive understanding of mechanical devices. Some people just love to take apart machines to understand how they work. It shares the value of Productivity with agriculture, but with an added emphasis placed on Efficiency. Often works well in concert with the Bureaucratic culture. I think this culture manifests itself in an industrial capacity, but I think it has its roots in the archetype of the artisan: how to transform raw materials into a product that is useful enough that it can be traded for something else to create a surplus of value.
Anyways, it was a book that sparked my imagination. Another book I wish I had the time to read more thoroughly. . . .
1. Prophetic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Hebrew prophets, Paul, Pope Gregory VII, Luther, Pascal, MLK
The prophetic culture is a culture of protest and alienation from the dominant powers in society. They want to unmask the problems of the status quo in the name of justice and freedom. It's a culture of fundamentalism and martyrdom that brooks no compromise with other points of view. Its utopian vision of promising things to come is beyond reasoned argument. Hence its discursive style is one of manifesto, proclamation, and command. But on the other hand it also employs lamentation and a logic of paradox in its goal of radical social transformation and revolution.
2. Academic/Professional Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, Freud, Einstein
The academic culture employs instensive analytic questioning in its search for Truth. But this is a search that can never be fully satisfied. It looks for clear-cut definitions and employs a deductive form of reasoning, moving from principles to certain truth. Its logical and rigourous style of inquiry is fully at home in institutional settings such as the lecture-format classroom, lab, library, and research institute that the iconoclastic prophetic culture would not have tolerated. Its full flowering occured during the medieval Scholastic period. Scholastic academic institutions became the blueprint for the modern form of the university. It's a labor-intensive culture whose practitioners take years to master specialized forms of professionalized knowledge.
3. Humanistic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Homer, Isocrates, Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Montaigne, Erasmus, Goethe
Unlike the institutional embodiment of the academic culture in the university, this culture of belles lettres finds itself at home in the humanistic/liberal arts secondary school. It focuses on the role of good literature in education: poetry, drama, history, and rhetoric. If the prophetic culture focuses on Justice and Freedom and the academic culture searches for the Truth, the main goal of this culture is the Good. Like the prophetic culture, this culture seeks societal change, but unlike the more intolerant approach of the prophetic, the humanistic seeks common ground and compromise. It's more inward-looking: it encourages us to look inside ourselves and see our dilemmas through the lens of others' egos as communicated in literature. It aims at a broad civic responsibility that is sparked by the moral imagination. Unlike the deductive, linear logic of the academic, it employs a more emotional, circular form of reasoning. It relishes ambiguity and layers of meaning in its placid rumination of fundamental values.
4. Artistic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Phidias, Michelangelo, Bach, Wagner, Hollywood/Broadway musicals, Geary
Unlike the three other cultures, this culture does not employ words; rather, it uses dance, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, and spectacle to communicate itself through ritual performances, rites, and ceremonies. It primarily uses the power of the image in pursuit of its main goal--the Beautiful. As a Jesuit, O'Malley thinks this culture is most fully realized in the pageantry of the Catholic mass. The mass is a kind of play or "deep play." I wonder if O'Malley would think of film or even the visual interface of the internet as an heir to this iconic culture?
O'Malley doesn't see these cultures as mutually exclusive. In fact, many artists seem to represent more than one. Shakespeare, for example, employs the language of the humanistic in the service of the artistic culture's dramatic spectacle. Martin Luther's "Here I stand, I can do no other" is clearly in the tradition of the prophetic, but his German translation of the Bible seems to be in the humanistic tradition. Also, his many hymns contributed powerfully to the reformed version of Protestant religious service.
I think O'Malley's idealism masks the prevalent role of two other tendencies at play in Western culture (maybe they wouldn't qualify as cultures under O'Malley's definition?): the athletic and bureaucratic cultures. Also, I think there is another dimension of the religious not captured in the prophetic--the other-worldly focus of the spiritual culture. And the basis of all these other cultures is the agricultural--the one that feeds everyone else. Here are my proposed descriptions of these four other cultures and a few others for extra measure. . .
5. Athletic Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Navratilova, Comaneci
O'Malley places the agonistic spectacles that originated in the Greek Olympic Games, refined in the Roman gladiatorial spectacles, and finding modern fulfillment in the world of professional sports under the aegis of the artistic culture. But I would argue that the glorification of the human figure in sporting contests is of an entirely different order than the artistic. While it, too, relies heavily on the logic of the spectacle, unlike the artistic emphasis on the Beautiful its primary value is a glorification of Strength. In the artistic there are usually not winners and losers, but in the athletic culture so much hangs upon the ultimate result. Unlike the high-falutin' tendencies of the academic, humanistic, and artistic cultures, the athletic culture speaks much more to the man on the street. The focus of many a small town seems to be primarily the performance of its high school football team. It seems like an important translation of the figure of the Warrior into a more socially acceptable form. (More Sparta than Athens)
6. Bureaucratic Culture
Given the faceless quality of this culture there are no good paradigmatic individuals to help us understand it better, but two individuals have helped us diagnose it in its modern form: Max Weber and Kafka
If the prophetic emerges in Jerusalem and the academic, humanistic, artistic, and athletic cultures originate in Athens and Greece, then the bureaucratic hearkens back to the hierarchial organization of society in Egypt and the Persian satrapies. The primary value of this culture is Order. Hence, it seems to be in direct conflict most acutely with the prophetic culture, which seeks to overturn the established power structure. It's a culture of the established priest-caste, whether this "priest" class is religious as in ancient Egypt or secular as in today's modern nation-states or multinational corporations. Although it's not my favorite culture, it does seem a necessary one in order to administer a complex society. Its scribes and clerks are often in alliance with certain professionals that come out of the academic culture--namely attorneys.
7. Mystical/Spiritual Culture
Pardigmatic Individuals: Buddha, Hildegard of Bingen, Fox, Rumi, Blake, Emerson
The prophetic culture leaves out an important dimension of religion better captured in the figure of the mystic. If a would-be prophet directly confronts the powers-that-be in his/her search for Justice and Freedom, a mystic seems to seek a profound tranquility in the form of a divine Vision. Can you have a culture of one? Each mystic seems wholly unique and individual, so maybe it makes no sense to talk of a spiritual culture? But the ancient tradition of the shaman, divine seer, and oracle seems ill-served by O'Malley's typology. Like the artistic culture, it's often an iconic imagination, but this is so inward-looking that it seems of an entirely other order than the artistic.
8. Military Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Caesar, Napoleon, Patton
Many of my students have been or are currently in different branches of the military, and it is amazing to me how this culture has fundamentally affected how these individuals think. Much like the academic culture, it lends itself to a very hierarchical and regimented view of the world. But if Truth is the academics’ main value, then the military culture’s would be Discipline, Camaraderie, and, ultimately, Victory. I was looking at a book the other day on the proto-Indo-Europeans, and one of the things that struck me about this anthropologist’s guesses as to what this group was like was how their society might have been structured in a fundamentally similar way as the military still is. Or at least many societies that speak an Indo-European language now seem to be organized in similar ways. Not having been in the military myself, this is often a way of thinking that feels alien to me and am not sure I can explain it well. (My personal religious affiliation tends toward the Unitarian and Quaker, so many of my values are not shared by this culture.) Heart-breaking to me are papers my students who have served in Iraq write about their experiences there.
9. Agricultural Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: Cato, On Farming; Virgil, Georgics; Ideal of the Jeffersonian citizen-farmers; George Washington Carver; Frances Moore Lappe
I'm not down-to-earth enough to discuss this culture. It's main goal is the Fruitful and Productive, all the better to feed all the rest of the cultures with. It takes a specialized form of know-how type knowledge to be successful as a farmer. Maybe a sub-set of the humanistic culture, especially with its association of figures such as Virgil or Jefferson? I don’t think this culture is best represented by written treatises, though. It takes an intuitive sense of how to make best use of domesticated plants and animals for human benefit. Some people just seem more in tune with animals. (I vaguely remember a PBS show that featured a woman who was autistic who seemed to have a special affinity in working with cattle.)
10. Commercial/Trading Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: whoever “invented” money; Bill Gates (?)
Perhaps this belongs with Agricultural and Manufacturing (see following) cultures as a larger all-encompassing Economic/Business Culture. This branch deals mostly with the trade and distribution of goods and services. I’m astounded by the number of my students who plan to go into some aspect of business. I guess that’s where there are jobs—or at least that’s the common perception. Even my niece majors in Marketing. Sometimes I find it difficult to engage in meaningful conversation with folks emerged in this culture because of our conflict in values. Their fundamental value is Profit; whereas my fundamental values lie in the restless academic search for Truth or the humanistic goal of the Good. Because of its ubiquitous role in American culture, I often begin my writing classes with a critical analysis of the logic of advertising, It’s a language anyone who has ever watched a few hours of TV fully understands, which often seeks to short-circuit our critical faculties, which makes for an interesting collision of ideals! I find it interesting that the world’s richest man is Bill Gates, not someone who was an innovator in computer technology but was instrumental in distributing these technologies in a mass way. (I wouldn’t be able to write to you in this format if it weren’t for these series of innovations. But this is a culture that also has deep roots in our society. Jesus wasn’t fond of the money-changers in the Temple, but without their current incarnation would we be able to live the life most of us have become accustomed to living?
11. Manufacturing/Industrial Culture
Paradigmatic Individuals: James Watt, Frederick Taylor, Ford
This culture is similar to the agricultural culture in that it is best represented not in written works but in an everyday, almost intuitive understanding of mechanical devices. Some people just love to take apart machines to understand how they work. It shares the value of Productivity with agriculture, but with an added emphasis placed on Efficiency. Often works well in concert with the Bureaucratic culture. I think this culture manifests itself in an industrial capacity, but I think it has its roots in the archetype of the artisan: how to transform raw materials into a product that is useful enough that it can be traded for something else to create a surplus of value.
Anyways, it was a book that sparked my imagination. Another book I wish I had the time to read more thoroughly. . . .
