Culture in Crisis Part – I

 

Culture in Crisis

Mr. Jawaid Quamar,

Part – I

The history of humanity is ceaseless conflict between two fundamental instincts. On the one hand, there is the instinct of conservation which jealously clings to what it holds, and, turning back into it-self, locks itself fast in. And, on the other, we find the instinct of expansion, that vital urge which continually strives to tear as under the shackles. History tells us that every age of expansion is succeeded by one of contraction, and vice verso. Today, once again, mankind stands at a cross-road.

Rise of Mob

“Modern civilization”, says Radhakrishan, “is exhibiting today all the features which are strangely similar to the symptoms which accompany the fall of civilizations, the disappearance of tolerance and justice, the insensibility to suffering, love of ease and comfort, selfishness of individuals and of groups, segregation of men on grounds of blood and soil”. It is a development with roots striking deep through centuries especially the last two.

The latter part of the eighteenth century witnessed a rise of new populations, the populations of the then emerging new industrial societies. It was an uprooted population. It was uprooted not only from its villages and home towns but also from traditional, religious, moral and political pieties. It was a population which was made the victims of external agencies, for the most part for no fault of it. As a consequence, this population was indifferent to its own character. Accordingly the potential of this population did not amount to more that riot and rowdyism.

This population was subsequently described by the term MOB. The mob appeared to be an antithesis of a normal citizenry, the citizenry infused with what has been called by some the republican morality. All existing industrial societies are nothing but the results of steady transformation of original urban mobs into a people. Obviously the factor responsible for this change of early societies is not only faith but also an Economics of technological innovation. Thus, with the increase in productivity, the urban mob turned into an urban citizenry and later into a suburban citizenry.

Bourgeois Mass

We all know that bourgeoisification of society is one of the great events of modern times. The ease and celerity with which today's society is breeding bourgeois men and women is, indeed, startling. There was a time when the urban mass was confronted with the problem of bourgeois. But now this urban mob is itself turning into what may be called a bourgeois mass. There rather unexpectedly, during the last decade, a queer phenomenon appeared on the scene. “Though bourgeois in condition and life-style”, writes Mr. Irving Kristol of New York University, “the bourgeois masses, who inhabit new urban civilization of industrial societies, became less bourgeois in ethos and strikingly more mob-like in action”.

The ways in which sundry strata of today's citizenry are beginning to behave like a bourgeois mob are known to us all. What is significant here is “the extent to which a mob is not simply a physical presence”, observes Mr. Kristol, “but also, and above everything else a state of mind. It is, to be precise, the state of mind which lacks all of those qualities that — added up to republican morality steadiness of character, deliberativeness of mind, and a mild predisposition to subordinate one’s own special interests to the public interest".

Adversary Culture

What are the causes of the present-day disorders is surely a question that concerns all of us. In the opinion of Prof. Lionel Trilling, the well-known American critic, the trouble is traceable to what he call the adversary culture -— the so-called elite culture. With the passage of time, this elite culture of the bourgeois society got steadily incorporated into the conventional curricula of the schools and like institutions. With the spread of mass higher education, it began to penetrate the popular culture of the masses and thus shape it anew. This resulted in an anomaly. From the very first days of the romantic movements, the work of the most gifted poets, painters, novelists, and such other men and women had an awful animus against its own bourgeois society.

This anomalous situation coupled with the absence of social and moral values makes the contemporary culture, practically, wholly inefficient. Today we are caught in a cultural confusion, nay, rather a culture anarchy. What is the secret behind this cultural shift? What are the further consequences of this cultural change? This necessities a deeper insight into the very definition and the nature of a culture. Anthropologists as also sociologists define a culture as consisting of three main elements: behaviour patterns, as in a funeral service; artifacts, anything made by human Workmanship and belief systems, such as the conventional wisdom, religion, etc.

Culture Per Se

Certain psychologists, especially those of the school of psychoalysis and of the newer school of behaviourism have a deliberate tendency to emphasize the role of behaviour ‘patterns and like in the definition of a culture. Thus a typical psychological definition of a culture may be something like this: “It is the man-made environment in its totality, especially the language and customs that distinguish one society from another”. But by a concept of culture we here mean a culture distinct from its popular usage as behaviour patterns and artifacts, that is as the sum of mere social symbols, customs and language. For this usage blurs the specificity of the super structural complex which is a society’s original thought, art and its belief systems. In fact, T.S. Eliot goes so far as to assert that “no culture has appeared on developed except together with a religion”. In effect, the culture that concerns us immediately is the one which provides our fundamental concepts of man and society. Thus the disciplines which are obviously amenable and relevant to a sociopolitical and structural analysis are religion, anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, aesthetics, political theory and economics.

Culture may be likened to an agency with a power transcending any particular observable act or habit or quality. The ideas of culture provides the metaphysic of our idea of community-life and the ground and sanctions of morality. Man can be fully human only if he is in accord with the best traditions of his cultural milieu and, also, if the cultural environment is in accord with the best tendencies in himself. It is this idea which is said to constitute the infrastructure for our theories of education, child-rearing, social sanctions and morality.

CULTURAL AUTONOMY

Nevertheless it is true that there does not exist anything as a principle of cultural autonomy in an absolute sense. It is a gravely mistaken idea to think of cultures as sell-contained Systems. For the process of cultural fusion is always there at work. But then this does not mean that we should react to what Hegal described as “the terrible principle of culture” in the same fashion as Freud did. For it only leads to another extreme. But, to our utter sorrow and surprise, we find that today’s bourgeois mass, because of its mob-like mood, has reacted rather violently to what Hegel spoke of culture. Now we hear men speak of cultural status quo. Then there are those who speak of cultures as inadequate and inefficient. There are others who may now even speak of them as neurotic.

As a result of this arbitrary assault on culture, its domination started fading. The influence of the family, which generally serves as the conduit of cultural values and the allied effects, began deteriorating. The state and religious institutions came to lose their authority slowly but steadily. Thus there remained no agency or authority which might effectively support the general culture of the society. This cultural depression automatically resulted in the loss of a definite sanction which might revise or regulate the behaviour, attitudes and ideas of individuals as also of society. As a consequence, a lot of pseudo-systrms and quasi-theorisings began to emerge. But all this was in vain. For they were all partial in character and often misconceived and confused.