Understanding Culture 101

In the wake of the Utøya massacre and its insidious perpetrator, the ever ongoing debate on multiculturalism is a hot topic once again. And as always, when certain political factions or elements start debating this concept and its inherent evil, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Because it is a simple fact that culture is never clean nor monolithic. Not even when it tries to be.

On one level, defining cultures requires a consensus and set parameters to define the specificity of one compared to another. However, most of the political factions interested in this are actually not so much interested in consensus as in being able to provide the vision to govern the definition. The reason for this is, of course, always to separate us from them and clearly establish the difference between ourselves and our Other(s). But anyone who tries to define a cultural enclave in this manner will always (without exception) stumble on the finishing line. No matter how narrow the parameters are made, it is impossible to exclude all those one wanted to exclude, and the narrower the parameters are set, one also increases the equally inevitable risk of excluding people one wanted to include. In short, whatever makes up any definition of any culture can never be absolute, or entirely fixed for the matter.

This does not necessarily mean that we should abandon cultural definitions altogether, but it should make us aware of the imprecision in their natures.

So, what does this mean? Simply put, culture is something that arises in social contexts, in inter-individual meetings, when the ego means an Other. Furthermore, this central metaphor also expands to an intercultural usage (if you will pardon the confusion for a second). That is to say, when one imprecise cultural definition meets an Other imprecise cultural definition, new cultural references arise in that meeting. This is unavoidable, because culture is both resilient and innovative in its nature.

Do not get me wrong. The equation is obviously not that simple. If it was, colonialism and imperialism would never have been a problem. The difference here is that colonialism and imperialism is not so much about a meeting between cultures as one culture violently attacking another. The main factor here has to do with power, and it can arguably be invoked on any situation where one cultural enclave uses force to apply its own cultural definition over others; either to dominate them or to eradicate them. And even in such instances, history has proven that the meeting is not unilateral anyway. There is an old saying that claims that you are what you eat, and apparently even colonisers and empires are affected by what they devour and digest.

But this is not the case here in Sweden (nor I would dare argue, in most European countries or in the US for that matter). Islamic culture (because as always since at the very least 9/11, this debate is about Western civilisation (and possibly Christianity) being overrun by Islam) is not in any position of power here. Nor, differently put, in any position of power greater than any other minority (and most certainly not greater than any majority). Swedish culture (whatever that is) is not overrun by excessive Islamic references or specific values. If anything, one could argue that Swedish culture or identity runs a greater risk of being overrun by Anglo-American values, but you rarely hear political groups like the Sweden Democrats complain about that type of cultural import as opposed to favouring Swedish culture.

And I would bet that they eat pizza as well. After all, pizza could arguably be seen as rather typical Swedish food. In fact, you cannot go anywhere in Sweden without finding a pizzeria. This is more or less true for any small town in the country, but this was obviously not always the case. Nor do we need to go very far back in history to find a time when it certainly was not (the mid-20th century saw the introduction of pizza into Swedish culture, and it was not an immediate success either). Similarly, the epitome of Swedish food – the Swedish meatball – is Turkish in origin, and was integrated into Swedish cuisine much like the pizza, only a couple of centuries earlier.

In short, the notion that the multicultural society is something new is a myth. Culture has always been a mongrel dog of many mixed breeds. And that is partly what keeps it alive.

I am not saying that there are no values to traditions. I am, however, suggesting that we have to understand that traditions themselves are never entirely fixed. We may talk about how a proper Swedish Christmas should be spent, for instance, but in all honesty, if we define proper as "the way they were celebrated 100 years ago" (a fairly short amount of time for judging these things), I honestly wonder how many of us truly do. Or perhaps even more strongly, how many of us even know what that would actually entail? And that is not even taking into account local variations. In more cases than not, our strongest sense of our traditions are our own memories of how things is or was, specifically for us.

Much like language, culture is a living thing. What was will not always be what is; nor will what will be be guaranteed to last forever. Culture is an ocean of ideas, values and traditions, mixing and mingling as the waves and the tides move. And we are creatures adrift on those mighty waters, sometimes pretending that we are in control of their movements.

Who Will Actually Know How to Change the Batteries When They Run Out?

A friend of mine recently said that her children will be computer whizzkids more or less by default, and I questioned this notion. Do not get me wrong. It is not as if I question the ability of my friends children to actually become computer whizzkids. They are still very young and have a lot of time to develop such skills in time. What I questioned was the belief that these skills will be more or less inherent in this generation of children. And this belief is more common than one would honestly wish.

The argument relies on the fact that we live in a society where computers are all around us and that everyone, from an early age (and for better or worse), is forced to interact with this technology on a daily basis. This is undeniably a fact in this age of the internet, social media, smartphones, etc, and I certainly will not make any attempts to deny it. What I strongly question is the flawed assumption that simple exposure will computer whizzkids make. And point to the fact that if that is what we believe, maybe we need to redefine our understanding of what a computer whizzkid is.

It is true that the current generation of children will not have (some of their) parents' (not to mention grandparents') fear of using some of these devices and media. Having grown up around them, the children will no doubt see these devices as a natural part of their lives. But having no fear to use a device or medium does not by default mean mastery of said device or medium. In fact, in this specific context, there are gaps. As I hope I will show.

The first gap is this: computers and other devices today (like smartphones) are designed to be user friendly. This is of course a plus, as it makes these media accessible to more people, and as such makes the many fora opening up all the more democratic. Or at the very least the possibility of their being democratic is heightened by the fact that almost anyone can use them, and definitely without an advanced degree in technology or physics. On the downside, there is quite naturally a greater risk that fewer people understand how the technology behind the devices actually work. And this, of course, applies both to hardware and software.

To illustrate this point further, I would like to point to the situation of my own generation. We are the early generation of people exposed to home computers. I had several friends who had Commodore 64 or 128. For my own part, I opted to get a Nintendo, simply for the reason that it was more user friendly when it came to gaming (no real loading times, no winding cassette tapes back and forth – and yes, not only obsolete floppy disks were used in the early stages but also actual cassette tapes). My decision was one of convenience. Yet, while there is no doubt in my mind that my computer-owning friends had their computers for gaming (just as I had my Nintendo), I note with interest that quite a few of them have continued into careers in software programming or computer support.

The key to this is not strange, of course. While I saved a bit of time on loading my games whenever I wanted to play, they gained early insights into the structure and language of computer coding. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. I would go even further and say that necessity can also be a great motivation for learning. Or differently put: human beings are quite often lazy by nature. If we do not have to know something, chances are that we will not bother about acquiring the knowledge.

This sort of brings us to the second gap I wanted to discuss: we are already a few generations into the supposedly naturally computer savvy homo sapiens computer (if you pardon the expression), yet I have had students who do not know how to use simple functions and tools in word processing programs. And before you make the argument that everyone cannot be expected to know everything everywhere (which is certainly true), one of the core arguments when claiming that young people are more and more universally belonging to a new breed of computer whizzkids is that these people (because of their fearless nature) will be able to find their way on their own, even if they do not have the specifics in their head at the outset. If this was true, how come they stumble on very simple problems like changing font sizes and types, line spacing, adding page numbers, headers and footers? Or use the spellchecker? Quite simply put, the less we need to scratch our way below the surface of things, the less we will bother finding out what is underneath that surface, let alone know and understand how whatever is there actually works.

As the user friendly nature evolves, the average user (albeit quite obviously belonging to a much greater community of users) will know much less about code writing than my childhood friends who did their gaming on computers; will know much less than myself (who would by no means make any claims to be a computer whizzkid), who acquired no knowledge of code writing, but at least some basic understanding of information structures in some operating systems, after years of using computers as tools for word processing and the like.

This problem (and make no mistake, it is a problem) can be compared to an obvious one in the field of car mechanics. When I was a kid, it was not uncommon for people to fix their cars themselves whenever there were car problems. These days it is more or less impossible for an amateur to dive under the hood of a car and fix anything, because of computerised systems, and nuts and bolts that require specialised tools. In short, the further along we have got, the less car users know about how their vehicles work, and more importantly, how to fix them should something break down.

Similarly in computers, the more user friendly and surface oriented they become, the less informed about whatever happens underneath the surface most users will be. And the worse that negative ratio grows, the more hopeless a scenario when something goes awry starts to look.

A while back my internet pal, Zaki Hasan wrote a blog post entitled "The Death of Saturday Morning". The post deals with the technological advances in television broadcasting and recording, which has forever changed the playing field and made Zaki's (and my own) memories of waiting for a show to start (rather than instantly appear at the press of a button, whenever required) somewhat obsolete and incomprehensible to the current generation of children. There is something of an all-consuming id being fostered into the texture of our societal weave in the underlying question of necessity: why wait?

Why wait indeed? I will not pretend that I am not a fan of watching TV-series on DVD, in order to avoid being bound by a TV guide schedule dictating when I can see what and how much of it. But that confession does not deny that there is an inherent problem in a culture that is seemingly developing a greater and greater need for instant gratification, while simultaneously developing technology that insures that we need not acquire "useless" information about how our tools actually work. If we continue on this route, where will we end up?

Or differently put: eventually, who will actually know how to change the batteries when they run out?