CHAPTER X
THE INDIVIDUAL IN CULTURE
So far, we have indicated the vast and multiform phenomenon of culture. We have presented some of its various characteristics. We have determined also the reciprocal implications between human nature and culture. Let us now reflect on the human individual in culture, that is, in whatever culture the individual is in, his/her situation and his/her role in a particular culture.
After we have pointed out the relationship between human being and culture, our reflections depart for a philosophical knowledge rather than from certain knowledge of a cultural fact.
Our reflections are further responses to the marvels that are experienced as we are faced with the cultural diversity and to the types of attitudes-responses that the phenomenon provokes. One response could be the refutation of the diverse cultures as inhuman, or a refutation of any culture as non-essential to the human being. Another response is the affirmation of the division of the humanity into totally diverse groups of beings in as much as there are cultures. We have mentioned partly in the last two chapters, that the human being behaves according to the very nature of its structure and of the types and levels of acts, which would lead to culture and to its diversity. But we add that the culture in which the human individual belongs is at the same time received and assumed by him/her, determining and further determined.
Finally, the reflections in this chapter intend to prepare us to confront the question of the value of culture and of cultures, the solution of which is the sole capacity of satisfying the astonishment experienced from the encounter of the phenomenon.
I. The
Individual Inserted in Culture.
Every human individual - as a social animal - is born and develops himself/herself in a group of individuals of the same specie. Every human group possesses the fact of culture. The individual then conforms and adopts himself/herself to the behavior and the environment of the group that are cultural. In as much as, s/he has the propensity to tend towards and to will, s/he is able to understand and affirm such behavior and such environment, value and wishes. S/he makes choices and behaves intelligently within the scheme of the culture that s/he receives through tradition. The human individual's development is enhanced and at the same time determined by his particular culture. Such culture could be Italian or French, Cebuano or Ilongo, B'laan or T'boli.
Such fact, which results from the observation of cultural phenomenon than from the nature of the human being, is confirmed negatively on rare cases in children reared by wild animals than from children tossed among groups linguistically and culturally very much diverse. In this situation, the children are intellectually disconcerted and torn to pieces thus suffering neurotic crisis and they stop developing themselves psychologically.
To summarize, first of disposing of the arbitrary freedom, and also later, given that this game in the scheme of knowledge that one possesses, the activity of the individual in the group - from motives to adhesion of values, from affectivity to judgment - and with it also the ambit or the operative schemes determining further the faculty, they develop themselves more rapidly because they are favorably stimulated by circumscribing culture.
So the individual becomes participant of the culture of the group in which he/she grows as an adult. His/her behaviors make himself/herself more human but with these same culturals of such culture, and his/her environment, from the very beginning not purely natural, makes himself/herself more human with these culturals themselves of that same culture: the perspective of the systems of concepts, of convention, of scale of values, of symbols and signs, of perceived configurations, body movements and adaptability of the objects.
We must remember, avoiding the equivocal, that the insertion in a culture does not mean knowledge, adhesion, and behavior…. covered together in that culture: it does not become so; it is not required and not possible. Many will not know all the myths considering that in a culture there is limitation in the number of individuals and the diversification of parties involved. Theoretically, the human being will not know the minute details at the end. Nor will a man know the way and the exercise of following all that which belongs to the behavior of a woman, and vice versa, and similar. Much more will it be so for cultures, which imply specialized activity and multiple social roles. For example, the priest or the soldier will not know, will not feel, will not be able to follow … all that which pertains to religion and war. But any role, any specific belongingness and so forth, by the fact of belonging to the group of the given culture, they imply a mode, more or less indeterminate to all the rest, as our non scientific the actual science, our none-technical the technical would be as environment than as exercise.
But the said insertion of the individual in its culture is not everything, because the human individual conserves radically and even - for the same fact of the cultural development ---augments his/her capacity to know, to judge, to choose and to conduct himself/herself beyond that.
II. The Role of the Individual in Culture.
The role of the individual inserted in a culture is first of all that of behaving himself/herself in accordance to schemes and models of behavior and relatively to the environment or world which both constitute it.
We also note that the behavior, more conventional, impinges totally the individual soul and body, implying the knowledge already acquired, the adhesion already made, the experiential and biological activity…, and the concrete realizing itself in a culture in a new human existence is for itself something. Moreover we have seen in chapter 6 that the same culture offers alternative behaviors, and that any realizations of the schemes or cultural models of behavior contain varying individuals.
But there is more. We must remember that any application of an abstract knowledge to a concrete case requires a new act of knowing, and often also of choice if it presents more possibility of execution. We think, for example of an engineer who applies his/her scientific and technical knowledge to construct bridges in the concrete situation, or of an indigenous tribe who throws a suspension bridge of liana (New Guinea) across a torrent. We think of choices of words and metaphor or examples adapted. We think of the choice of material for arms and of decorations.
Such behavior - it would be as means-to-end than as expressions - contribute to the maintenance and to the continuity of the culture, because it maintains the cultural environment. And with regard to the other participants of the culture, it confirms its existence and validity to the eyes of all. And there it introduces to the new generations through tradition.
But the individual inserted in a culture not only functions according to the scheme of the culture, where s/he actualizes herself/himself, but concretizes it and sustains and transmitting it to the future generations. There evolves, in some measure, consciously or unconsciously, an active role of further contribution or modification.
First of all, the simple quantitative contribution: work, word, generation of sons, rites and so forth, if there are no conditions particularly adverse, they tend to multiply the objects of use and the members of the group, making their knowledge of the proper culture, extending modifications to the natural environment. And we note that in human things the quantity - expressing ourselves in Marxist terms - tend to pass into quality, as it changes in some measure the situation of the group undergoing new problems and new possibility immediately and impinging therefore the qualitative modification of the culture. For example, we have the multiplication of the followers of St. Francis, which requires adaptations of the order itself and to the society of that epoch. Another example is the increase of the population and of the commerce in the 5th cent. a.d. which poses the problem of the restructuring of the city-state, or the increase of the population in the groups of the island of Polynesia, and so forth.
Then, the qualitative explanation of the virtuality included in the existing culture: an artistic style or a literary form, a technic or a political system, a mystical aspiration pertinent to such religion or a modest system of family relation. There is no need of thinking of exceptional figures who did great within the scheme of tradition, like Pericles in the democracy or Virgil in the epopee or epochal: every artist provided it would really be anybody of state and any mother of family.
Finally, the individual inserted in his culture and departing from this modifies it directly within his/her schemes of behavior and in the structures of his/her world with every new theoretical understanding and every new proof, every new technical invention, political solution, religious aspiration, affective modality and artistic style. We think for example of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) for the scientific vision of the cosmos, of Saints Francis and Dominic for the way of religious life, of George Stephenson (1781-1848) for the transportation, for the medieval introduction of the staff of the military art, of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) for the attitude towards nature as the roots of romanticism, of impressionism for the picture, and so forth. It modifies it, in as much as this henceforth fades in the existing culture modestly. It becomes accessible to others in its expressive behavior or means-to-end, and becomes acceptable and assimilated by the group. In any case, it collocates itself in some measure also minimal other his/her culture. And the role of the others is of accepting and assimilating (perhaps widely and more lately) that agreement or also refuting it spontaneously or reflectively elaborating the reasons and perhaps being problematized.
Even the refutation of an element of the proper culture, the contestation, the revolt …they are made possible by the individual inserted in it. It would be for some reason or a cause that constitute it. The individual always from the very root transcends it; s/he is free, but can also commit “sin” in the exercise of such freedom, that is falling from that which s/he knows as reasonable and good. We note that such refutation is never total (we think of Lenin or of Mao), in as much as, the human individual cannot in one act of knowledge exhaust the entire culture in which s/he is shaped with all its passed. And also because the passage to other structure is never total.
Purely, the refutation exercises - always in the measure of its expression and accessibility to the others - a certain influence on the culture of the group, shaking the conventions and generating doubts or instead provoking an adhesion more conscious or more urgent new solution.
Since the human individual, although inserted in a culture, develops a role that is not hidden from all in its limits, but also in some measure more or less modest overcome them. In a measure modest, because it transmits it the proper capacity of operating that are stated modeled from the culture and because also the agreement of a genius is modest in confronting the extra great number of agreements which have flowed in the same culture. But always the relation between human individual and culture is dialectic, of formative influence reciprocal that it is to the root of originality of history.
The phenomenon: culture, its characteristics, the reciprocal implication with human nature and the role of the individual in it - in some way indicated, known and determined - they put us now in the level of facing the problem of its value.