Responsibility not Fantasy

It appears, at least to this observer, that a global divide has taken shape over the past decades: the divide among people who define themselves as progressive and modern – and those who stand against change, or at least its pace, which they perceive as being too fast. At the forefront is a political division, which we can witness every time new elections take place, no matter where they are held.

In the United States, a black president who legalised gay marriage and enacted a broad health care reform for all was, for some, too much too soon. They stand against what they perceive as ‘special’ rights for minorities and find the debate about transgender people using the bathroom of their choice an abomination.

In Europe, every EU Member State and those who are lined up to join have their own, similar, ‘anti’ movements. People are mobilising and organising against the EU, immigration, and asylum seekers. In the UK, this protest has led to Brexit, whatever the economic consequences might be. The fact that it was mostly older people who voted for Brexit points to the conservativism and backlash character of these movements.

In the United States, a black president who legalised gay marriage and enacted a broad health care reform for all was, for some, too much too soon.

Beyond Europe, we have witnessed people marching for equal rights, democracy and modern lives in such countries as Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya – even if many of these protests were quickly subdued by those who are against change because they have something to lose from it. It may not be comfortable, but seen from this perspective, the difference between ISIS, right-wing antiimmigration activists and Erdoğan’s AK party is merely one of quantity and means – not of quality – as they all stand against change.

In most countries, the majority of people are facing each other along a divide that is mostly cultural in nature. Some embrace modern lifestyles while others fear them; some embrace change, while others seek to avoid it. The dividing line seems so deep that one camp is unwilling, or unable, to even listen, let alone consider the positions and opinions of others.

The fact that culture is the cause of such division is further evidenced by the fact that both sides have long ago lost any coherent political programme. Much of what the left argues is in fact traditionally right-wing (such as anti-globalisation).

The right has similarly embraced noncoherent and even contradictory ideological and political positions, arguing for strong government on military matters and reproductive issues, while advocating weak government on most economic matters. To most people on both left and right, politics has deteriorated into a culturally infused lifestyle performance. As such, it seems to be determined by the way we dress, consume, and live. In this way, insiders display that they belong to different, culturally defined communities and signal “I don’t want to talk to you or listen to you”.

While this conflict plays out in the political arena in most countries in the contemporary world, in this essay I argue that what lies at the heart of this divide is indeed culture, not politics. Most cultural anthropologists define culture as a symbolic system that humans use to make sense of the world in which they live. In essence, culture is therefore an established and broadly accepted way of making sense and giving meaning. Change thus inevitably threatens our ability to understand our world, make sense of it, and find meaning in it.

Culture is a group effort, and one person cannot create and sustain a culture. As such, culture requires community. Culture thus requires a minimum number of participants, but it also seems to have upper limits, probably imposed by our own, very human, cognitive limitations to processing complexity. A ‘world culture’ or even ‘European culture’ might be forever out of reach and we might never be able to fully identify and feel solidarity with people and groups whose language we do not understand and whose ways of making sense of their worlds and surroundings are different from ours.

Culture is a group effort, and one person cannot create and sustain a culture. As such, culture requires community.

It is also far from evident that having something like a ‘European’ culture is a good thing to begin with, as it raises the question: “which culture will it be?” There is good reason to fear that a broadly encompassing European culture will be a slightly modified German or French culture, thus bringing back a situation similar to the one pursued by the Nazis who sought to “heal the world with German culture” (Am Deutschen Wesen soll de Welt genesen). A unified European culture, let alone a world culture cannot, and should not be the solution to the ongoing and potentially sense-eroding process of change and modernity. What then?

The humble position of this writer is that the only way to find and renew the ability to find and make meaning and sense out of a changing world is in local culture, firmly anchored in local communities. Here, then, also lies the problem we face today and the root cause of the cultural divide I have described above. Over the past 200 years, we have all witnessed a massive and everaccelerating destruction of local communities, mostly done for the sake of profit – that is to say, the profit of the few to the detriment of the many. Whether it is under direct colonial rule, as during the first half of these short 200 years, or during the latter phases of postcolonial Western and Northern dominance (in the case of former colonies) or simply during late capitalism (among the former colonisers) – capitalist ‘development’ has meant, almost everywhere and with very few exceptions, the destruction of local communities and with it their ability to provide meaningful cultural frameworks in which local people can find meaning and orientation.

To put it strongly: if and to the extent that we become individualised consumers of mass culture and lose our face-to-face interactions with our neighbours and friends, we lose those bonds that give meaning, sense, and direction to our lives. As we are, by our very constitution, profoundly social beings, what happens next is all too familiar from experience:

Lee found in her research among different native societies of the Americas and the Pacific that being strongly anchored in a local culture, often called ‘tribal’ in the Anglo tradition, provides not only a firm framework for understanding one’s place in the world but also creates the conditions to be free and autonomous as a person. The idea that local culture has to be restrictive and limiting is true only when the freedom sought is egotistic. As long as personal freedom overlaps strongly with the freedom of others in the same community, the local community is the guarantor and enforcer of personal freedom – alongside the freedom of the whole community.

Only when people are actively involved in their communities can there be an active process of confronting change together and responding to it in ways that make sense to the community as a whole as well as its members.

The key to this possibility of finding personal freedom and autonomy in a strong and meaningful local community is, to the best of my understanding, grounded in responsibility and duty towards that same community. Only when people are actively involved in their communities can there be an active process of confronting change together and responding to it in ways that make sense to the community as a whole as well as its members. What 200 years of capitalist development have instead brought us is massive individualisation; the destruction of local communities; the dilution of responsibilities and civic duties; and a world of utterly disconnected individuals, who feel lost.

While the problem of the current polarisation of the world seems cultural in its roots, the way to overcome such deep division and mutual mistrust is political. This is because culture, while persistent and at times resistant, is also changeable and malleable in that it can adapt to new circumstances and challenges. A culture of mutual trust and cooperation has limits – cognitive and logistic – but it can survive and thrive if people become active citizens in their local communities, taking on responsibilities and duties. This is, however, precisely what our currently dominant systems of liberal, capitalist, representative democracies undermine.

The only solution to the problems of increased mutual suspicion, misunderstanding, division, and terror is rooted in mutual cooperation, where mutual cooperation can best be done in local communities – even if this is not the only place and scope for it. It cannot flourish under conditions of exploitation, which is why there cannot be a genuine cooperation with those whom we exploit and use. Colonialism and postcolonial paternalism have thus undermined the very conditions of genuine cooperation across different communities of the coloniser/colonised divide. Capitalist exploitation has done the same among the colonisers, dividing them into haves and have-nots.

It is only in the practice of mutual cooperation that we can find out that a different-looking fellow can still be a fellow and is indeed not so different after all.

Representative democracy, the system that colonialism and Western hegemony has produced and sought to spread and propagate across the globe, has undermined even the very possibility of genuine active community participation everywhere because it has undermined political participation and transformed active citizens who take their destinies into their own hands and mould their own futures into passive consumers of politics. As such we consume politics along with all the other things we do not need, that make us sick, and that further undermine the very possibility of fulfilling our destinies as political beings, able and willing to make and give direction to our own lives.

The good news is the solution lies in mutual cooperation and working together and in political participation in general. To achieve this, we need fewer professional politicians and more avenues for direct citizen involvement and participation.