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Just what is culture? To a 15-year-old aboriginal native on the Amazon River culture is culture. Culture is culture to a 40-year-old telephone repairman in Philadelphia. Yet, both being "cultured", one could hardly believe that these two have much in common. Nor could one imagine their survival if they had to suddenly trade places. I would give them even odds.
Now we see issues of "forced" integration in the United States becoming heated debates and often ending in irrational decisions. In the first place, most people erroneously refer to these issues as being "racial" problems and therein lies a grave error. A solution to a racial dilemma is by no means a solution to an ethnic one. When it comes to race, people are identical for all intents and purposes. Physical appearance should have no more bearing on a social decision than the color of clothing worn. Who cares?
Ethnicity and the cultures encountered are an issue. Though I find many cultural habits fascinating to observe, I dare say that I wouldn't engage in or even condone some of them. Somebody else would not engage in or condone mine. However, the refusal to condone does not give the right to condemn. If I may speak frankly... I hate rap music; I don't even qualify it as music but then, I enjoy Led Zeppelin and Vivaldi. Have I distinguished myself as being racist because rap originates mainly from African Americans? I sincerely hope not; race has nothing to do with it. Rap is not any more black than Vivaldi is tanned. It's ethnic.
But, back to culture. The social dilemmas we're experiencing in the 90's are resultant from culture clash, which is resultant from oppression. Yeah, I said oppression, and No, I am not trying to be an anti-government activist here. But nobody likes to be forced to do something and particularly so if they're being forced to adapt to some alien influence. It tends to give humans a feeling of insecurity. The government, however, has determined that it is necessary to force cultural integration. Legislation is passed on a basis of racial equality which I've already pointed out to be irrelevant. If you qualify to be a Homo Sapiens, the issue of race be damned. It shouldn't even come up anymore. Dissimilar cultures, having to meld, has been the issue all along and in that process of melding, the fear of becoming assimilated develops. Ethnocide has been practiced before!
The remarkable thing about the Inca's was their social welfare system which guaranteed a lifelong income to old or injured workers. During the productive years, a laborer was required to output according to his quota. If the laborer surpassed his quota, that person would be publicly honored and rewarded; that, in itself, is a somewhat unique approach for an ancient civilization- the integrity of the lower class was rewarded. Sounds like the Inca's had developed an interestly utopian social system?
If a laborer slacked off, that person was publicly humiliated and punished. The managing class selected EVERY person's spouse for them as well as food rations and housing and clothing allotment. Most crimes were punishable by death, including lazyness. How's that for ethnic evolution?
The Incas maintained a large, conquering army that systematically absorbed one native tribe after another. Oh, these tribes were given a choice: 1.) join the Incan Empire willingly or 2.) be utterly destroyed (absolute ethnocide). A tribe that had joined the Incas had to relinquish all property and conform to Incan law. No peoples were allowed to hold on to their own heritage in any way. All inherent customs had to cease and all had to conform to the religion, culture and societal demands of the Incan Empire. The alternative was death.
That is, of course, an extreme example of culture clash. Even the Roman Empire didn't go to such extremes. When the Romans conquered an ethnic group, they allowed them to keep their own culture; they merely had to obey Roman law and pay Roman taxes. The Romans even got involved in supporting their cultures by allotting tribute money toward the building of public facilities. If a conquered person wanted to become Roman, they did so by incentive; not by force. But, we're talking about ethnocide and social assimilation here so, enough about the Romans. The dangers of ethnocide do and have always existed.
Peru (here we are again) is a geographically and ethnographically diversified country with vast natural resources and a standard of ethics that rivals the ruthlessness of Atilla the Hun and the ignorance of a cliff-jumping Lemming. With empoverished and expanding coastal populations growing out of sustainable proportions, the Peruvian government made a "knee-jerk-reaction" decision to promote it's interior territory as a "promised land" of opportunity. This began in the 1940's and has resulted in the ethnic slaughter of countless peoples. I do not doubt but that genocide can be added to the list of consequences.
In particular, the Shipibo are indigenous to an area along the Peruvian Ucayali, a major tributary into the Amazon River. The Shipibo had settled the riverside and learned to live in its environment long before the Peruvian government arrogently chose to "improve" it. Their word for "fish" is piti and also means "food". This is a clear indication (ethnically) of how closely the Shipibo's survival depended on the river.
When the coastal people were incited (by the government) to settle the area, the poulation jumped from about 2,500 to 30,000. Trees were cleared (as now) for production purposes; the river was dragged for fish; the Shipibo were thrown into a drastic survival mode. The article quotes a source as saying, at one time it was impossible to sleep at night because of the sounds of the jumping fish and aligators hunting them. Now there are no fish. There is no piti, food. The city of Pucallpa exploded into a violent and filthy river town that raped the environment and ethnically murdered the Shipibos.
Christian doctrines and the danger of extermination put an end to the use of natural contraceptives which was administered by the shamen of the Shipibo. At one time they had known what natural rainforest herbs to use to induce birth control. Now (at the time of this article) the knowledge itself is gone; the Shipibo's greatest fear is producing too many children; the population had grown to 250,000. And no food.
The Shipibo bloodline survived but the ethnic framework is gone. THAT'S Ethnocide! A people that once lived in harmonious concert with their environment has been reduced to a desperate scattering of economic refugees who live in squalor. THAT'S unforgivable- I consider it paramount to crimes of atrocity. Peru had not improved the poverty of its coastal cities, it had extended it to the interior. Such blind stupidity is always followed by severe consequences that can never be reversed. The process continues still today; ethnocide is very real!
That brings me to another point; what I call the "natural" evolution of culture.
This process is best described by ROMER'S RULE:
An innovation that evolves to maintain
an existing system can play a major role
in changing that system.
This (paraphrased) bit of wisdom was first presented by the paleontologist Alfred S. Romer in 1960. He used it in referring to the evolution of fish into land-dwelling animals. According to Romer's rule, fish did not develop leg-like appendages in order to live on land; they did so in order to walk from pool to pool in drought seasons. The appendages evolved to maintain thier survival in their present environment and only later, because of it, did they venture onto dry land permanently.
Anthropologists have embraced Romer's Rule because it also describes the "natural" order of cultural evolution. To reverse the rule in ethnic matters is to destroy the "natural" evolution of culture. Ignoring Romer's rule, almost every social intervention plan (well-meaning or otherwise) has resulted in ruining many more people than it ever helped. We, in the sophisticated civilizations, arrogently assume that our own cultural remedies can be beneficially applied to any other "deprived" culture. Our meddling in Africa's cultures is the reason why half the continent is now starving. (But Hell! We just HAD to "civilize" them!)
In the grade schools, we all love to extoll the wonders of a diversified cultural experience in our society. They're all a bunch of ego-sated liars. The photographers from National Geographic are quickly replaced by the entrepeneurs who would have all men to be created (and dressed) equally according to their own arrogent philosophies.
ROMER'S RULE clearly (and accurately) shows that a culture will make its own adaptive changes within its own environment. Only then can it move on successfully to a higher stage of development- after it's mastered its new skills. To force cultures together is- unarguably- only in the interest of those who engineer it. It can end only in ethnocide.
Today we pride ouselves on being liberalistic, on allowing others to make their own choices regarding their personal lives. At the same time, we- via special interest groups- enforce the assimilation of ethnic diversity. When two or more ethnic groups are forced to closely interact, all cultural identity will ultimately be combined into one hybrid, bastard culture. Just who the hell do we think we are?
Make sense?
There's more, but for now, I quit. Plenty to think about!
� 1997
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