Culture cont...

Culture is an interesting thing. I think my personal beliefs on it are a bit different from most people's in that I do no thtink culture is sacred or should be preserved because of anything other than appreciation of beauty.
Its hard to explain, but basically, the only reason I think"culture" should be preserved is in memeory and in museums.

I think culture is alive... it grows, ti adapts, it changes, it does what it needs to do. It is not a solid thing that everyone agrees on. It just is what life is and we can try and put it in boxes, and we can try and say no it should not include McDonald's or change in anyway, but really everywhere in the world it always has and it always will. We can and should try and remember, and honor, traditions that are falling away... but we should not assume, in my humble opinion, that the direction a "culture" is moving is "bad"... that statement takes a serious amount of thought and a serious amount of consideration.

Does that mean I am not angered or devastated when things in other cultures die, or have died because of organizations that I may or may not be part of? No, I am. And that anger is mine to have. Does that mean that that should or should not have happened? I have no idea... what I do know is I am angered equally by the decimation of Ancient Egyptian culture by the influx of Islam, the destruction of Babylonian "culture" by the jews, the "moralization" undergone by many cultures by Christianity. Why do those anger me? Because I wish I could see them, I wish I could see the beauty they had to offer... Selfish and unrealistic in the end. I think it comes from a combination of my intense desire to see adn experience the whole world... and all of time... and from my lack of real identification with any culture, especially not the American one... which is only a fraction of who I am, where I've been, and where and how I was raised.

There is also "material culture," "artistic culture", social culture", so what am I or anyone else talking about when they say culture? Who the fuck knows and it needs to be clarified when you are having a conversation.

Anyway, to finish what I wanted to finish last week... all of which this was a prelude to...

The Marshallese in my opinion have not, and still do not have much of any "material culture"... the STUFF we can get excited about as adventure seeking and materially driven americans. Clothes... food... dances... architecture... etc... do they have some? yes... is it creative and awe inspiring? not to this young and immature buck...

This is of course coming from someone that longed for it in going back abroad. Coming from urban USA... I was trying to escape a world I already considered even more void of awe inspiring material culture than here...

The colors in colombia can make you feel high, the passionate love of ancestry in ecuador can make you feel a bit empty of your own, the architecture and sheer history of many parts of Europe can make you feel extrememly tiny, the landscapes and perpetually present animal kingdom or india and nepal can force you to see God in the world. ANd in all of these places, the food can tantilize you until your mind settles in your stomach.

Here, to me, that is not so. Here to me material culture is a scarce and slowly withering thing. Pictures of the Marshallese drum are everywhere yet there is no drum to be seen or heard. The smallest semblance of adventurous material culture I may have been genuinly selfishly pleasured by would be the material scarcity of this places' past, before missionaries came and both bettered and worstened this place, as they have greater bettered and greatly worstened many other places.

THAT all being said... some of the places with gerat material culture have an almost invisible smidgeon of spirit, or of hospitality, or of love, or passion, or joy. There are SOCIAL cultures that are self-hating, self-defeating, alienating, and in some cases even harsh, in some cases oddly paranoid. There are social cultures of discrimiantaion and of fear. One of my greatest concerns is that that is exactly where the USA is going... deeper into a culture of fear and discrimination that the fences sepertating it and Mexico can never get too expensive or too high...

A moment of silence for that sad and recent addition to the world...

The Marshallese do not have a perfect or fully unfrustrating social culture... but their hospitality, their spirit, and their capacity to love is beyond most I have experienced in my whole life. It is a culture of survival and of mutuality that is alaso slowly dying. Slowly being replaced with American values of productivity, materialism, and and self-preservation.

That to me is a real loss... the loss or lack of material culture is only sad to the part of me that wants to white water raft and learn how to dance in new and interesting ways covered in new and interesting clothes.

I am honestly, and deeply saddened by the slow loss of what many parts of the world could learn FROM the Marshallese...

humility, acceptance, reverence, patience, love, freedom, prioritization of relationships, community, communion, sharing, desire to suspend time with other people, the undefinably large appreciation for conversation, hospitality, demonstration of affection, and many many many other things that make up the undeniable spark in many, if not all, of the marshallese I have met so far.

if anyone is responsible for that loss its corprate america. the missionaries i find respectable and valuable, and in some ways hope the little i am doing here emulates are those that passionately see that spirit and aim to save it.

In terms of material culture the world is loosing little less than nudity from the marshallese...
In terms of social, spiritual, and all other subsections you could create of culture, the world is loosing some of its greatest and most empassioned souls...

a day of silence and prayer for the hope that the spirit of the marshallese, a spirit of survival and warmth may find strength in the face of materialism.
a day of silence in gratefulness to those who have given their lives to preserve it.
and a year of silence for the beauty the marshallese have to offer that may be too far gone to share with the world.