We are Culture
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3:1 On some deep level almost everyone feels insecure, afraid, separate, isolated, and unsure of his or her own authenticity and value. We rarely openly confess and share these feelings with each other without attributing it to some specific cause or incident. Sometimes our anguish shows up in works of art or drama, or when it has built up to a point of crisis that can no longer be kept hidden. But about this personal suffering as a constant background condition, we generally keep our mouths shut and our gaze elsewhere.
3:2 To cover up this raw state, we obtain knowledge and adopt beliefs. From these, we fabricate a particular sense of self from which we deal with life. We might feel more “valuable” in the eyes of our community, but this does nothing to change our base condition. The only difference is that we’ve added yet another layer to our sense of “self.” It’s here that we step into an unending struggle with life. We suffer a nagging sense of fragmentation and dissatisfaction, and we lose our sense of real being—the source of our genuineness and innocence. Seeking relief, and unaware of any alternatives, we obtain new goals and possessions or adopt new character traits to bolster our self-identity. With each new attribute or acquisition, we further lose touch with the source of our own power, creativity, and inner peace—the very qualities we desire most, and also the only means to repair our situation.
3:3 How did we end up in such a pickle? The main source of this buried condition is the profound effect that our culture has on our entire frame of mind. Our culture is, in fact, what constructs our frame of mind. We all operate from a set of shared taken-for granted beliefs—the matrix of our culture. This “consensus reality” may unite us in a shared domain of thought and perception, but many of the inherited assumptions behind it actually foster a sense of uncertainty and isolation. Various perspectives of our culture seem to offer solutions to our individual doubts and insecurities, but since these remedies arise from the same assumptions that cause the difficulty, they do not and cannot resolve our deep sense of personal inauthenticity and disquiet.
3:4 For example, we might feel a gain in status when we achieve a personal goal or acquire something we desire, but this is merely an embellishment of our self-sense, and as such it is both superficial and temporary. One of the first steps toward real being is learning to recognize our cultural beliefs and how they lead us into the very struggles, dissatisfaction, and inauthenticity that we want to avoid. In this chapter we’ll look into two of our most damaging core cultural assumptions, and some of the inevitable consequences of assimilating them. Since culture is something we take for granted, let’s first take some time to consider the nature of culture.
3:5 To be “cultured” originally referred to having a refined appreciation for the arts. Over time the word “culture” has come to indicate the collective viewpoint and customs of any group of people. Although we now acknowledge that there are many different kinds of culture, the word can still carry connotations of particular esthetic refinement. So, hearing the phrase “cultural assumptions,” you might have the impression that you could find these down at the museum or opera house. Certainly you will find evidence there—our cultural values are expressed in every piece of artwork, architecture, or anything else that any of us creates. But where exactly is our culture?
3:6 We tend to overlook the fact that a culture exists only within the people who make it up. Instead, we live as though individuals and cultures are separate events, as though somehow we exist apart from our culture. This is a bit like thinking a forest exists independently from the trees. When we look at it impartially, it’s plain that culture is purely conceptual—there is no culture outside the minds of the people who comprise one. Our culture is made up of our collective temperament and values, our assumptions and beliefs, our methods of thinking and our cosmologies. Our culture is found in every building, every word, every idea, every routine, every ritual, every method, every book, every mind, every emotion, every value, every action, every bias—in short, it’s made up of everything we do and are.
3:7 Since we’re born into a culture, we can no more avoid being shaped by it and passing it along to our children than we can avoid being the product of a gene pool. The assumptions of our culture exist in our minds and perception, in our feelings and beliefs. Although they are “merely” conceptual, they live within each of us, as a very basic part of our experience, and they manifest in every activity we undertake and in every place we live. Our culture, our community, our society is you and I—and everyone else. Culture exists in us. It is one of the most basic factors in the framework from which we perceive the world around us.
3:8 Cultural assumptions are part of the foundation for our perceptions. We can’t help but take them for granted. We look out from them, which makes it difficult to look at them. No matter what we encounter, much of our interpretation of the event or object or person is predetermined by the assumptions that unconsciously shape our perceptions. One obvious example is gender stereotype. The bias, beliefs, and programming that exist in a given culture will be superimposed on an individual’s perception of every male and female. Core cultural assumptions bind us all and are as common and natural to us as the air we breathe. These assumptions are shared beliefs adopted not from personal choice but simply as a result of being part of a community.
3:9 Even various subcultures, regardless of their differences, are founded on the same basic assumptions. It may sound as though these assumptions are somehow force-fed into our thoughts and perceptions, but our indoctrination comes about quite naturally in the process of growing up within our culture. These background beliefs are reinforced at every turn and simply fall into place like basic “truths” that dictate the nature of our experience by shaping our interpretation of whatever’s perceived. Since these assumptions are shared by everyone around us, we don’t recognize their considerable influence.
3:10 Since the birth of humanity, people have created many phantom worlds in which to live. In fact, our most powerful inventions are not technological at all; they are conceptual. Every culture needs structure and values in order to function as a cooperative effort, and commonly held beliefs and assumptions provide a central unifying force. In response to the questions of existence, such as “Who are we, and why are we here?” a staggering number of belief systems, values, religions, cosmologies, and worldviews have been invented, lived, and taken very, very, seriously. For the most part these “inventions” occurred organically or collectively over a period of time, but despite their unpremeditated beginnings, they are inventions nevertheless.
3:11 By design, the modern human mind craves knowledge, especially in places where we can find none. When faced with an absence of information, we’ll make something up—we will believe and assume. This tendency appears to be universal—in every culture, some form of beliefs arises to fill in for the lack of absolute “knowledge.” Every subculture with a set of beliefs clamors to have the last word on the subject, claiming themselves guardians of the Truth. Many of the different factions are willing to war over their inventions, but no one is willing to confess that they simply don’t know what the truth is.
We delude ourselves that we want to implant honesty in our children: what we really want is to imbue them with our particular kind of dishonesty, with our culture’s dishonesty.
—Sidney Harris
3:12 Everything we invent in this way and live as if it were real or true will have repercussions. While we might understand and accept that there are consequences to the actions we take, it’s difficult to grasp that our beliefs and assumptions also have a cost. To recognize this, one would first have to forego attachment to his or her own personal opinions and admit that the ideas at issue are beliefs rather than the truth. Acknowledging this point is scary for anyone. It opens the door to doubts, and few people can tolerate the possibility of their whole belief system unraveling before their eyes.
3:13 Keeping that in mind, it becomes easier to understand how difficult it is for us to question any of our beliefs, no matter how subtle or seemingly inconsequential they may be. We’re quite willing instead to accept the consequences. We’ll shoulder all the woes of the world so long as they fit in with our way of holding reality. But what if a great deal of our suffering is based on assumptions that are false? The resulting consequences would be completely unnecessary.
3:14 As you can imagine, there are many kinds of beliefs and assumptions that warrant scrutiny. In working our way toward understanding, however, we need to proceed in layers. At this point we will focus our inquiry on the following two categories of cultural assumption:
1. Our views regarding not knowing: Which result in the veneration of knowledge, an aversion to ignorance, and the adoption of beliefs in place of experiencing the truth.
2. Our assumptions regarding “self”: Which result in the adoption and preservation of a fallacious “conceptual” self.
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The Book of Not Knowing, Chapter Three, The Cultural Matrix
Peter Ralston
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