The Rebel South: Anathema?
You know something is up when you think of something foreign to yourself and simply can’t understand it or you recoil in horror. It doesn’t make sense to you at all. So maybe that thing comes to be pure evil for you. Something finally safe to hate.
The American South has been turned into something like that. People just can’t comprehend slavery or racism. But the funny thing is that slavery was common up to the modern age. Condemn the South, condemn the medieval era. How far back are we going to vet history? With black slavery, does it ameliorate your feelings to realize that Africans ran the trade and practice themselves for millenia prior to colonial contact? What do you do with the notion that an entire culture perhaps ought not to be judged by one aspect, especially an aspect as seen from a remote perspective that admits it cannot comprehend. Not that slavery is good or better than any other cultural feature, but that these aspects are considered in any reasonable approach to a culture? As for racism, we are dumbfounded by it. But how rational is that? I suspect we are mystified only because of the demonizing brainwashing which has been applied to the notion. Because everyone is racist. Minorities no less than anyone else. Why is it that we can’t comprehend it? The biggest reason why it is intractable is due to the blinders of our refusal to see ourselves. The problem with racism isn’t that it’s in us, it’s what we do with it.
So among educated people the world over the South is a bogey. Isn’t that special. And we doubt the power of superstition and taboo.
The latest example I heard of this is from a young female essayist whose thoughts were pumped up on NPR the other day.
She was disillusioned by our current political scene so she sought refuge in her past. She watched a movie documentary about the last show of the great old rock band called The Band. The Band commited themselves to roots music, most of which is not coincedently from the South, songs of pain and loss. At their last concert, during the radical foment of the mid-70’s, they fly a big Rebel flag on their stage backdrop. Our radio commentator sighs and says she’s been betrayed yet again.
Isn’t it special that the culture that created such music can be cut out and damned by its other features? Isn’t it neat to know that you can separate elements of a culture one from the other then obliterate the whole thing because of one piece? Isn’t it neat how it works?
What rubbish and ugly nonsense. What willful blindness. What smug, ignorant self-righteousness.
What is this person? Some vessel of innocence passively waiting for approval or travesty to just happen to her? Meet my expectations: fulfill me or betray me! It’s not up to me. I’m a finished item ready for you. A human litmus test of justice. I’ve perfected myself in one step after listening to one type of voice telling me how good I am to believe. I believed the professors and for my approval they felt good, too, and gave me an A. The prof from the podium, surrounded by kids instead of being out working among independent adults, feels inadequate and mocks who she pleases and proves them with that one voice to be baseless fools. The good kids parrot the mockery and they all have fun and get ahead. The perfect set up for understanding, right?
Is this a proper training for a lifelong skill of being able to increase ones perspective beyond the level one is already at? Does it build in humility so that you’ll be willing to see how silly you were with previous notions? Obviously, ones views will change from the early education phase of ones 20’s to when one is older. Obviously such training keeps one from overstepping bounds based on natural uncertainty so that one has no regrets later for what one did earlier? What kind of training would neglect that? Ah ha, training to be a tool for someone would.
What an embarrassment these professors set people up for as soon as they wise up. They train them to be cocky in their ignorance. For if it’s possible to grow all ones life, what is any stage but a level of relative ignorance compared to where one might be down the road? How reasonable are confidence, mockery and cynicism as skills in a system which might include learning or growth? Not reasonable at all. But how are people trained today in the social sciences? Sheesh. No wonder The Band was singing lamentations. Do we think they were only singing for what THEY lost?
What is this betrayed essayist girl now best trained for, specifically? What might she do if, say, a long-time trusted colleague makes a pass at her in the office sometime? What if a colleague expresses a view which is different from the herd’s? By that one act or opinion I would think that she’s now prepared to ruin his or her career and life. How well prepared is she to avoid such a temptation if she directly or indirectly stands to gain in approval or standing by such an accusation?
What do people think the South was? Is? An unmixed one-issue reality of evil incarnate, fit only to be exterminated? What do they think the North was? Is?
The way I’d suggest to help a person better understand an actual issue of culture would be to start from first things. What kind of tools do I have for evaluating? Are they scientific? What is science today? It’s utilitarian. It’s based on performance. The goal? Today it’s comfort and advancement. To a great extent, scientists today work to please their superiors as part of the foundation of their quest. Most when they find something differing from the goal of their specific profession, or particularly their specific office setting, will quash that information and pursue requested leads instead. This is called efficient. However, if it’s knowledge about a culture which one is after rather than ‘results’ per se and all the freight and bias which comes with them, one best look into how one learns actually new and different things best, how one learns what one did not know before. Otherwise, again, our previous knowledge mortally distorts what we find. Fortunately the answer is easy. For thousands of years people have relied upon such tools as shock, paradox and counter-intuition to surprise an existing paradigm into seeing something new. Otherwise, humanity has found that it can’t be done. Aristotellian logic is used to improve, say, the idle efficiency of an engine. Paradoxical and dialectical logics are used to learn.
There’s a reason why satire is conservative, as Swift said. Culture is conservative. No one can reinvent the entire wheel. It’s a waste of time and we can’t know it all. We botch the job. Older, wiser people see what we can’t. We add our views but we avoid presumption. The young and the new both realize they lack perspective. The conclusion is that in order for anyone to learn anything truly new they have to learn it from someone who already knows, they must be taught. They then have to admit that someone else knows more. They have to submit and humble themselves. Someone wiser must present both the parable and the higher line of questioning which will reveal the contradiction of the previous view. And this can go on forever. Every view has a contradiction. They must not be clung to. But more factors than we expect or are prepared for will always be a part of learning. Firstly, we won’t recognize our teacher. If it’s new material, we can’t see it. Secondly, what we see or hear will shock us. If we’re tolerant, we won’t be tolerant of this. Thirdly, the notion won’t be complete. It will be just a start, a step, a notion, a provocation. The amazing lesson of Know Thyself is that we can’t. But we still have to be oriented to learning. It’s a path. Unlike machines, which have fixed solutions, humans have nothing that can be called a fixed identity. We’re more like stylists.
How do we get to anathema from here?
