Cultural Reflection

The below is a rather intense post. Just to let you know. I seem to have been overshadowed by some kind of ardour.

This morning I was happy to be back in correspondence with a friend I’ve not seen recently. We got onto the topic of Uncle Sam and his controversial nature. Much reviled and loved by many, since 9/11 the relative virtue or evil of this large country has exercised quite a lot of energy that might otherwise have been spent combatting the enemy within the hearts of us all. Anyway, being as I am a man of opinion, I found myself articulating thoughts that make me wonder whether my readers will consider me anti-American.

Actually, I am no more anti-American than I am anti-Iranian, Anti-Israeli, anti-Palestinian, anti-Chinese or anti-Mozambiquan.

As it happens, cultural and religious, philosophical and artistic resonances between my background as an Englishman and a country that emerged out of England (principally East Anglia, so it seems) leads me, yes, to feel that I have more in common with America than I do with those other countries. But hey, my love of the stranger and the other, my fascination for the different and the alien (terrestrial or otherwise) strips me of any PC implanted guilt that I might otherwise feel for my feelings of sympathy for the Samuellian Eagle.

I abhor and have little time for the dualistic mental categories of either/or, which hosts of surrounding mental pressures conspire to box me into. Below I criticize a country that I love. One would have thought that criticism of what one loves is acceptable. Otherwise, was my Mother, who loved me, wrong to criticize me for not eating my spaghetti properly?

Much thought tends in an opposite direction: If you love a country, given the posited struggle of all against all, energy and opportunity should unremittingly defend it from those who hate it. Criticism, meanwhile, should be reserved only for ‘the others’, those not of ‘your tribe’, or ‘your people’. Otherwise, one is ‘disloyal’.

On the contrary, I believe it is primarily those you are closest to (especially oneself, then family, then friends, then community, then nation, then nation of a similar culture, in this case the US); those in other words whom one is most identified with and know the most about; those, in other words, that you feel you understand the best, that you should feel the most free to criticize. In these cases your criticism is not a fundamental, malicious attack, but an attempt to offer suggestions to something you are in fact responsible for, since it is something you yourself contribute to and, in concert with others, constitute.

Yet regarding strangers, different cultures and nations, those from whom you are more separated and different; is it not inappropriate, on account of your ignorance, but also simply rude, to criticize them, especially if this is done in the indelicate ways we see characterising so much of the purported present day ‘clash of civilizations’? And is it not also likely that your criticisms may in fact be an attack: rooted in the weaknesses of hate, the debility of fear, in decadent tribalism, in the desire for conquest? Rooted in the murder of life, the murder of hope, the murder of love, the murder of God?

More later, perhaps, on the murder of God- perhaps at Easter, when we commemorate this extraordinary event. The murder that, to my theological understanding,, God endlessly forgives us for, whether or not we deserve it.

Oh well, below is what I wrote. The style was gentler and more relaxed than the intensity displayed above, as is appropriate for a friendly email. My main point, in summary of what I circuitously express above, is that I am not an anti-American just because I criticize America.

“I guess the thing that disappoints me the most would be Americans' tendency to feel the need to remind people as much as they do about how strong and robust and virile they are. I consider this to be, when I see it, ungracious and unmagnanimous. The strong should wear their dominance with humility, especially if they are pretending to be Christians.

I guess this assertive streak is allied to their 'frontier spirit', which rests on the knowledge that their country is based on a serenity-shunning, questing, utopian adventurism. I also find peculiar their oftentimes impenetrable insistence on appearing happy and upbeat all the time, despite the fact they take more anti-depressants and see more therapists than most other peoples (or so I have been led to believe). Their lack of a homogenous culture, except one bound together by consumerism, and their insistence upon their individual rights to self-aggrandise and violently defend themselves against other people, is also striking. Whereas most countries are rooted in accidental history and simply time and custom, America seems to be based on a dream, a hope and an adventure. This can explain, perhaps, America’s sometimes fantastical detachment from what Europeans and others might call 'reality'.

Actually, I am not anti-American. Not at all. A great thing about the US is that it shows that extremely diverse people, by creed and ethnicity, can live together in a workable, albeit imperfect polity. And despite what I say about the emotional inauthenticity that can be found there, their optimism and lack of cynicism can be refreshing. British sardonic irony and satire can be excessively anti-life and anti-joy at times.

Then my friend said words critical of American foreign policy, and I responded like this:

‘America is a bit schizoid regarding its involvement with the world. Isolationism wrestles with imposition in a manner making one think of a bear that, while thinking its cave best, will from time to time rummage outside for food and check its defences. But its world is its own world and it doesn’t really understand how the other animals live. Often the bear will be nice and kind and give guidance to other animals, whether asked to or not, as it goes about its business outside its cave. It may also invite guests and even adopt and make bears of others, or else just show off its cave paintings. But sometimes the bear doesn’t know its own strength, or else does know it all too well, and, bull-in-a china-shop style, creates a degree of havoc. Ultimately, it means well, but finds it difficult to do this on terms other than its own. Perhaps its inner emotional insecurity rests on the memory that its tenure of the cave it inhabits is young and was forged in violence and genocide (though this can be said of many, or even most, newly emergent countries of course).

I think America's main crime in the eyes of the world, is just to be too strong and too wealthy. Morally, spiritually, it is no worse than other nations (and better than some surely?) but because of its power and unipolar world dominance, it projects its all-too-human moral mediocrity very impressively, and becomes an easy scapegoat, in the eyes of many, for a spiritual malaise and basic sinfulness which is everywhere.

Oh well, such is life. I am a quasi-gnostic, so I don’t expect much to be impressed with this world.”

Actually, as I read this now, I see that I said some nice things about Uncle Sam. I usually shy away from the word ‘sin’ because its meaning seems so lost and degraded in modern public discourse. But I used it in this case because I was writing to a Christian, so it seemed appropriate.

Less intensity, which I am better at controlling in my recent years, in my next post.