Perspective

I saw a particularly gruesome and vulgar episode of South Park that raised the bar on brilliant satire. The episode was about Britney Spears and was a commentary on celebrity obsession culture in the US media today. Britney is stalked throughout the episode and blows off the top 90% of her head. For the rest of the episode she is hustled around by a 4th grader (tongue loose) to escape te glare of the media. Nevertheless, not only does the media but an entre group of people finds Britney and shines the spotlight so bright that she collapses and dies. A conspiracy is revealed in the end in which US culture is compared to Mesoamerican cultures in which human sacrafice was done peridoically. It is said that we breed these helpless (hapless?) celebrities solely to destroy them in the end and maintain order.

What I find brilliant about thsi episode is not only the brillaint commentary about how obsessed with celebrity lives we are, but the comparison to human sacrafice. The creaters disregard any notion of political correctness and call out the hideous aspects of our culture in an explicit way.

This kind of look at our culture opens the door for a self-reflexive analysis that exposes our own culture as bare as it can get. It draws connections. Suddenly we see our own ways of life compared to something that we might consider both immoral and gruesome and savage.

This came to mind earlier this evening as I read a refreshing blog about the raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints in Texas. Most are quick to make judgements about polygamy and "cults," but are these things we define as wacko notions really so different from our own? The idea of mongamy in the US is fairly debunked. Serial monagamy at best, we might say. The fact is we change partners often and often commit to several at a time (even while enveloped in this sacred institution that is "marriage"). Placing celebrities on a giant public pedistal (TV) and watching their fall is tantamount to human sacrafice. We regulalry mutilate our bodies by injecting poison into our face and chopping up are breasts to conform to culturally accepted norms of beauty. Yet we are disgusted by female circumcision. We are quick to judge Muslim religious states, yet refuse to see the strong and often violent influence of Christianity in our own political and national actions. Plenty of various states are criticized for human rights violations while we practice state-sanctioned murder (death penalty anyone?) on a daily basis.

Who is more savage?

What do we need for the future? Money, success, a democrat in the White House? No. Hope? Ha!

Perspective. We don't need to discard our ideals and practice my level of moral relativism, but we do need perspective. A perspective to understand context and continuity.

Acting Out

Hope and change has been the slogan of this political year. Unfortunately, politics has inspired little hope and has instead planted seeds of despondency that the United States is on a one way path to epic failure. All aboard the fail boat!

The immigration debate has inspired such despondency within me of late. It was highlighted by a small news story that slipped under the radar recently. Absolut Vodka ran an ad campaign in Mexico in which (in an attempt to celebrate Mexican heritage) it ran the slogan “In an Absolut World” over an image of 19^th century North American, where all the territory west of the Rocky Mountains was Mexico. Outrage arose, not from within Mexico, but rather from several conservative groups and journalists in the United States that called for a boycott of the brand. Absolut apologized for its campaign and stopped running the ads; A politically correct, profit minded and truly “American” response.

This reaction is representative of the deteriorating status of Mexicans and US/Mexico relations in light of the immigration debate. All politicians are dealing with the influx of illegal immigrants into this country, but the kind of rhetoric and ideas that are being thrown around reveal a dehumanizing of Mexicans.

In this debate Mexicans and Hispanic immigrants coming from the south are referred to as problems and often as “illegals.” Some might argue that terminology is harmless, but I think otherwise. Referring to fellow human beings in such negative ways creates immediate prejudice and devaluing. As a result the identity we project on Hispanic immigrants is one centered on notions of rejection, objectification and immorality. We refer to them, not as people, but rather as amorphous entities that exist in the realm of illegality and encroachment.

The discourse of solution is not a positive one. Illegal immigration (and the millions are human beings associated with it) is referred to as a problem that needs to be rectified. Immigrants are objectified and treated as commodities as we decide their worth in our economy and culture, or as we decide which ones to ship back and how to do so. There is not talk of moving forward, only of creating stasis by cutting off the routes and purging our country of these dirty, illegal and problematic bodies that are corrupting true American values.

Stephen Colbert joked with Mike Huckabee about building a catapult along the border to fire illegals back into Mexico. The idea seems ridiculous, but his satire is not far off. It highlights the dehumanization of Hispanic immigrants. Not only are their identities essentialized to that of “Mexican” but they are considered inherently illegitimate. Whether we agree with it or not, the immigration debate has stolen the status of equality from Hispanic immigrants. We are living in a world where “freedom and justice for all” is a farce and instead, human status is determined by economic worth and genealogy.

To be Freudian for a moment, can we examine the illegal immigration debate, and responses like those to the Absolut ad, as an acting-out of some deep seated problem? I think we can. The crisis we are facing here is not one of population, jobs, culture or globalization. No, what we are facing is an identity crisis of a national sort.

We are facing many problems as a nation, namely our economy and our political reputation. As the European Union and China grow stronger our role as super-power is being contested. We are accused of anti-intellectualism. Culturally we are divided over gay marriage, abortion, religion and wealth. Every day I see hopeless efforts to establish and secure the idea of “America” and a greater number of individuals and ideas that contest such an identity at fundamental levels.

The role of the United States and our future is uncertain and possibly quite bleak. As a result we are acting out and building fences on our borders to keep out those seeking better lives. As we become ever so deeply involved in contentious conflict in the Middle East, we are troubled and take our frustration out on those illegals that indisputably have broken the law and assailed our “American” values.

This debate is not about immigrants, they will continue to come and there’s nothing we can do about it. If we were a healthy nation, we would have confidence that our economics and culture would adjust accordingly. What I see through examples like that of the Absolut campaign, is that these crises we face are more likely unhealthy and counterproductive projections of our own cultural and identity crises.

We are freefalling downward into a pit of cultural crisis and shutdown. We are so insecure with who we are a nation that we are threatened by the Spanish language. Eventually, we will end our descent and hit rock bottom. We will be confronted with tumultuous and violent conflict as we run out things to cover our problems. Shall we focus of catapulting illegals back to Mexico? Shall we continue to obsess ourselves with the lives of celebrities? Shall we fill the voids of our political lives with debates over tiny and insignificant questions and comment? Or, shall we being to look deeper and find those bugs and irks deep within our cultural being and face our problems and the world’s problems head on?

I have not yet completely resigned myself to the bleak outlook I have defined here. I still have confidence that what we need is simple change on our own parts. Instead of breeding dogma, we need to breed understanding. I hope that one day we will be known as the generation of understanding that rose to the great challenges we are facing now and moved forward.

On the Future and Anthropology

See an update to this entry here...


Whether or not we like it, the world is a shrinking place. I think most would wonder why advances in technology and communication could be disliked, but I say this because there are those of us who don't appreciate and, quite frankly, detest what our world has become. Therefore, it is a shame, for us, to see the world we have come to know and hate slowly creep over all that has potential for good. This is beside the point though, at least for me because I have resigned myself to the fact that the takeover of materialism, capitalism, neo-colonialism and ethnocentrism is inevitable. Simply put, we must wait it out.

This statement, then, coincides with the contradictory nature that thrives within me. While I have resigned myself to this fact, I can't simply let it happen. As a humanist I have hope in humanity and the human condition. It lies in education. Not the type that humanitarians think we should spread across the "third" world (as if this planet allowed some to be fenced off from others!), not the type that Oprah gives to the girls in South Africa, not the type that the Catholics have traditionally offered at home and abroad. No, in my own recognized ethnocentric nature, I suggest a different kind of education; anthropology. I have been embedded in this discipline for three years now and it saddens me that it is such a forgotten discipline. (As I write this, I can't help but wonder if maybe anthropology is one of those few good things left in the world.) Anthropologists are an interesting breed. We're often impossible to describe on an individual basis so let's forget generalizing. The fact is, the more anthropologists I spend time with the more my mind opens, the happier my life gets and the more I hope I have for the future. I think it is the ideas we have, the knowledge we gain and the perspective we take that offers hope for the future.

I was going to offer a case study of my own university, but for fear of becoming to lengthy, I thought better of it. The point is that current "diversity" and cultural education in this country is severely lacking, if not non-existent. As I wrote somewhere once, we unabashedly celebrate difference without sensitivity and thereby alienate ourselves and others. Somehow we think that we can teach students about others without approaches developed by a field which has devoted itself to studying cultures. I've attended few "diversity" events at my university, but I have taken the course that defines our approach to worldly understanding; instead of students learning of others, they learn of otherness. I see current approaches only reinforcing strict "them and us" dichotomies. This leads to a security in thought and action. We believe that our actions can only be good because we understand other people, we have dealt with "diversity" and we are sensitive to other cultures. In fact, while made strikingly aware of cultural differences, our own way is still celebrated, we only discuss others in our own terms. This is a dangerous security.

Anthropology, simple introductory classes, cultivate different and often times new understandings. The most simple concept to an anthropologist in the 21st century is cultural relativism. Cultures can only be understood and should only be considered on their own terms. Reflexivity is massively important, for we must be aware of biases. Why do we feel the way we do about things? Anthropologists are not gods, we cannot overcome our biases, but the very act of recognizing them and considering how they shape what we learn about others is a skill we all (at least those true anthropologists) acquire and seek to master.

We do not have the power to change differences between "us" and "them" and we should not want such power. Difference is something to live joyously alongside with. However, the one way barrier between us and them need not be impenetrable. Simply considerations of biases and how we have come to be who we are break down this barrier, allowing for a two way transfer where all factors are considered. This is what anthropology has to offer to our shrinking world; a world where cultures are clashing and clashing on a daily basis. A world where all that people know falls apart around them forcing them to reckon with unfamiliar and confusing norms. A world where populations of people, internally as diverse as the sun and the moon, are generalized and told that they do not understand our ways, they cannot function in the modern world without our help. It is in this world and the near future that the one-way barriers between us and them must be perforated if not torn down.

I'm not saying that everyone should be an anthropologist, indeed, it is a field suited for very few. But the ideas and approaches that we practice and study should not be kept and secret and left hidden deep within the ivory tower of academia. This is a call, not only to those who could benefit from such education, but also to those who live it every day. Why contradict ourselves and create barriers between the "lay" and ourselves? We must share and make our ideas accessible, we must create programs that share our approaches and allow students (from graduate to elementary) to learn how to break down barriers and reach better understandings around them. I believe that it is in our hands that the impetus for change lies, we cannot change the world by locking ourselves deep within the halls of scholarship. No, we must make available those ideas and theories that lie at our core, that make use who we are. Cultural relativism and reflexivity, the most basic of our tenets, this is where the future of humanity lies.