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Within only the last few years teevee, magazines and even poorly informed social workers have begun throwing around an oxymoronic phrase that needs to be eliminated from our collective vocabulary with the same rapidity with which it appeared. Social scientists I have spoken with are concerned that uneducated people are going to fall into the trap of actually believing that an individual, or an entire society, might very well be capable of functioning in more than one culture simultaneously! The misnomer is "multiculturalism" and the concept is that of maintaining a variety of cultural identities within a single society. The term was concocted in the nineteen sixties by well meaning social workers who were not very well founded in the social sciences. Leaders in the field of sociology discouraged the use of the term and often went so far as to explain why the concept itself was erroneous. As with so many other things, the reason is simple; in reality, our society, like all others, is comprised of only one culture.
While it is true that amerika's population can be traced back to as many as four or five cultures, it is also true that globally few more than four or five cultures have survived into the modern era. The European and Mediterranean cultures have merged over the last two millennia with those of Indo-Persia and North Africa. The single culture shared by the aborigines of the northern continent of the western hemisphere (what we now call "America") has been all but eradicated. While they each have unique histories, the Asian countries share a single culture. The Polynesian peoples, scattered as they are over literally millions of square miles of ocean, share but a single culture. Except in cases where small populations have remained isolated from contact with the "modern" world, our societies have moved, not toward multiculturalism, but toward a homogeneity of culture within which exists great variations of heritage, custom and language. This is one of the concepts that Bucky and I spoke about at great length. Bucky is the person who coined the phrases 'global village' and 'spaceship Earth.' They represent the same idea; that this planet is a vessel upon which we are all travelling and that the humans who are travelling upon it can attain the highest possible degree of harmony if we relate to one another as do members of smaller, or village-like, communities. Bucky would be pleased to see that spaceship Earth is becoming more of a global village every day.
Many places in the United Snakes celebrate African, Asian, various European and other heritages, including those of our aborigine peoples. What is sad, and perhaps divisive, is that these celebrations rarely coincide with one another. It might not be a bad idea for us to institute a national holiday during which all of the People could celebrate their unique customs and traditions simultaneously, as unique but intgral parts of our single culture. Bucky was also a champion of the concept o synergy, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In amerikan society in particular, it is our multiplicity which has made us great. This was not an unforseen development. This country has long been called "the melting pot of nations" and it is no coincidence that the rebels who founded this nation chose as its slogan the latin phrase "E pluribus unum," meaning, "Out of many, one."
While the idea of multiculturalism may seem on the surface to promote harmony among persons of diverse ancestry or ethnic (not cultural) backgrounds, nothing could be further from the truth. Different customs, costumes, beliefs and dialects - even languages - can be (and more often than not are) found within a single culture. Cultural diversity is a wonderful thing, but one must keep in mind that no matter how disparate the diversity seems to be, it all can (and does) exist within a single culture... Ours should serve as both proof and the most perfect example of that. Contrariwise, cultural anthropologists have yet to discover records of any human society that has ever embraced more than a single culture. That explains why sociologists will gladly inform anyone willing to listen that it is very well near impossible for any individual to function within the norms of even one culture. While it is easy for poorly educated people to confuse custom with culture, the concept of a single person functioning viably within more than one culture at a time is ludicrous to social scientists! Attempts to do so can have but one result: Social schizophrenia. |
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