Cultural Renewal:
Revitalizing Youth Futures
By
Jennifer Gidley
(First
Published in the New Renaissance, Vol 9, No 4, Summer, 2000)
Vanishing Villages and Lost Cultural Health
‘It
takes a village to raise a child’
In the light of some of the
events of the past decade, this well-known statement has a poignant
and somewhat hollow ring to it.
Young people today have been born into an age where the
globalization of society has brought with it the homogenization of
cultures which once regarded village life as the bearer of their
particular and unique cultural heritage.
These diverse forms of village culture, now largely extinct,
truly did form the basis of the knowledge, the mores, and indeed the
wisdom which was the curriculum for the education and enculturation
of their children. Each unique culture had also developed over
centuries and even millennia, appropriate processes by way of
initiation ceremonies for marking the stages of acquisition of this
knowledge. In
particular, they highly valued the crucial passage from the
protection and guidance of childhood to the freedom and
responsibility of adulthood.
The marching monoculture of
the 20th century did no such thing.
Furthermore, this particular brand of culture that has grown
up in the so-called developed world, underpinned as it is by the
western scientific, technological paradigm of commodification, has
not only claimed cultural superiority.
In the most subtle yet pervasive manner the monoculture of
the North (once called western) has infiltrated and culturally
colonized virtually all the remaining diverse cultures of the rest
of the world, now referred to as ‘the South’.
What has this to do with
raising children? Or with young people’s views of the future?
If we take this village metaphor a little further we must
acknowledge that in the globalized world of the 21st
century, village life everywhere is rapidly becoming just another
‘suburb of LA’. In
this context the anachronistic adage above could be replaced with a
broader statement such as:
‘It takes a healthy society to raise a healthy child’
If this rings true, we must
seriously question the health of a global society where the children
of the ‘most developed’ nations, by the time they are
adolescent, are suffering high rates of depression, committing
suicide and violent crimes at alarming rates, and where there is a
general malaise, loss of meaning and sense of hopelessness about the
future.
Monoculture or Toxiculture
This global monoculture,
that the North is still imposing on the South through globalization,
has recently been described by film director Peter Weir as a
‘toxic culture’, after a spate of violent school shootings by
and of fellow students in the United States.
Yet this same culture is currently the bearer of the
knowledge and the mores, not only of the nations where it arose, but
it increasingly replaces the age-old wisdom of village life in
enculturating children across the globe.
Why has it taken so many
suicides, so many teenage shootings and so much loss of hope among
our young people for the leaders of this monoculture (the US in
particular) to even begin to question what we are doing to our
children? Since the
advent of TV, and Video game parlors, followed by the endemic use of
computer games, our children have been consistently and
exponentially exposed to violent and toxic images of murder and
other violences. Through
exposing our children to computer games (originally designed to
train and desensitize soldiers before sending them off to the
killing fields), as a ‘culture’ we have opened a Pandora’s box
we may not be able to close.
In the face of all this
bleakness, is it any wonder that youth futures research about the
‘probable future’ is a litany of horrors and that many young
people in the ‘developed’ world feel disempowered by the images
of the future they are fed.
A SYSTEMIC BREAKDOWN IN ENCULTURATION
It is crucial to explore how
this cultural malaise has arisen and to examine the major forces
that have shaped the culture which has ‘spawned’ the current
crises of confidence in young people today. Linked with this will be
reference to some of the symptoms expressed by young people of a
society/culture that is toxic.
While there are many forces of change occurring, in my view,
there are four major factors contributing to the breakdown of
society ‘as it was’ particularly in regard to the impact on
young people and their fears about the future:
1.
The triumph of Egoism over community
2.
The manipulation of imagination
3.
The secularization of culture
4.
Environmental degradation
The Triumph of Egoism over Community
The current age of the
‘I’ which celebrates self-centered egoism, began in the 60s and
70s with the recognition of (and rebellion against) the injustices
involved in the long-term cultural dominance of the ‘wealthy white
male’. The various
movements for ‘liberation’ and human rights (feminism, gay,
black and indigenous rights movements) set in motion a process where
rights began to dominate responsibilities.
While not wanting to undermine the tremendous gains that have
been made in these areas in the fields of equity and human rights in
the ‘developed world’ I would argue that in our zest for
self-assertion and compensation for generations and centuries of
‘sacrifice’, in some areas we have overshot the mark.
While it could be argued that the development of the Ego is
an important stage in the evolution of human nature linked to our
destiny to discover freedom, it could also be argued that the human
ego is a double edged sword. The
striving of individual human beings throughout the 20th
century for self-identity, and equal rights has culminated in
what David Elkind called the ‘me decade’ of the 90s.
And yet over 100 years ago, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was
aware of the dangers of the ‘free human ego’ unless it had some
spiritual grounding:
“The
most tremendous thing that has been granted to man is: the choice,
freedom. And if you
desire to save it and preserve it there is only one way:
in the very same second unconditionally and in complete
resignation to give it back to God, and yourself with it…”
From the demise of the tribe
(with the breakdown of authority
of the chief) in the face of globalization, to the breakdown of
families and other social structures (linked to the shift in
male-female power relationships) we are seeing an unprecedented
fragmentation of the social glue without which young people are
rudderless in their social orientation.
Children in the millions from Sydney to LA and from Capetown
to Bangkok are being ‘raised’ by a combination of TV and
child-care centers while mothers everywhere claim their right to a
job.
Is it just
coincidence that the symptoms observed today among young people,
such as homelessness, alienation, and depression have increased
during the same few decades? Could
this high correlation in fact have a causal relationship?
The Manipulation of Imagination
Over roughly the
same period of time, (that is the last three to four decades), the
education of children’s imaginations has changed from the
nourishment of oral folk and fairy tales to the poisoning of
interactive electronic nightmares.
Children once brought up on grandma’s knee with a bedtime
story are now plonked in front of the TV for hours on end in the far
ends of the earth, for their ‘imagination nourishment’.
Toys once made by mothers or fathers from simple materials
lying around, have given way in this ‘wealthy consumer age’ to
what are very often grotesque monster-like toys given ready-made to
young children. These
are not food for the souls of children but the food for nightmares.
And of course the TV, movies, and video games which are full
of violent images have a destructive effect on the tender souls of
the young who drink them in yet they are so pervasive that as a
society we almost feel powerless to change it.
Is it surprising then that
over the past decade in particular, symptoms have appeared among
young people (particularly in the US, but also other ‘developed’
countries) of ever increasing violence and suicide.
The secularization of culture
A third major change that
has occurred over the past few decades as well, partially linked to
the breakdown in authority and social structures already mentioned,
is the secularization of society.
This triumph of secular science over spiritual science,
coinciding with the widespread crisis of values reflected in
postmodernism as a ‘belief’ system’ has resulted in a dominant
world culture which although ostensibly Christian in fact reflects
an absence of moral, ethical and spiritual values. The
egoism that brings greed in its wake, the economization of politics
and social justice, the secularization of education, the death of
churches as inspiring community organizations and ultimately the
cultural fascism and terrorism that leads to ethnic cleansing are
all symptoms of societies that have lost connections with moral,
ethical and ultimately spiritual values.
The resultant symptoms in
young people are a ‘don’t care’ attitude, loss of purpose and
meaning, a ‘dropping out’ of mainstream society.
On the other hand the counter point to this is that many
young people are beginning to recognize this void and seek to find
meaning through a search for spiritual values.
Environmental degradation
Finally the culture that has
been in charge of the earth throughout the past century, which as
discussed has valued private and corporate profit, over community or
planet, has been responsible for the systematic and pervasive
pollution of our earth, air and water.
What message we might wonder has this given to our children?
Imagine growing up in a culture which doesn’t respect its
environment, and pollutes its air, water and earth and plunders its
forests and other natural resources … a culture that pops pills
for everything from a headache to sleeplessness, eventually
polluting our own bodies. Imagine
hearing as a teenager that the genetic engineering that breeds pigs
for human heart transplants, has through our engineered corn crops
exterminated the beautiful Monarch butterfly? What message do we
give our children about drugs when we support a medical/health
system that claims ‘If our children are ‘too active’ give them
drugs, e.g. Ritalin’?
Is it any wonder our
children are turning in adolescence to drug abuse to escape, or to
alcohol binges to drown their sorrows?
CULTURAL RENEWAL – DIRECT AND INDIRECT
PROCESSES
In the face of all these
cultural stressors and related symptoms, especially among young
people, that signal the breakdown of our cultural system, the formal
approaches of most professional and academic systems is ‘business
as usual’ or try to return to ‘the way it was’.
Most of the responses even the alternative ones, are
responses to symptoms or effects of the cultural malaise of our
times. Yet unless we address this malfunction and malaise at its
systemic roots, and in a transdisciplinary and holistic manner, new
symptoms will continue to replace the old ones.
How does one transform a culture, especially one that has
become a marauding mega-culture, devouring diversity in its path.
In my view there are
basically only two ways to transform a culture:
1.
Directly through changing the educational and enculturation
processes of the young people (Transforming education).
2.
Indirectly through telling ourselves and our young people
different stories about the future (Futures Studies).
The first of these processes
is well known and has been used in all traditional cultures to
maintain their stability. While
the mainstream education system may be critiqued for supporting the
status quo as described above, alternative educational systems such
as Steiner, Montessori, Ananda Marga, provide, at a minimum, values
systems which question much of the above.
The second process involves
the work of youth futures researchers and is a function of the
following understanding:
·
The past is impossible to change.
·
The present can be very difficult
to change as it so embedded into existing structures.
·
The future on the other hand is a
crucial point of leverage, in cultural transformation, requiring
firstly a belief that a better future is possible.
Secondly, this better future is vividly imagined in as much
detail as possible. Thirdly,
an action plan is made as to how it can be created.
By using the threefold
process described here, we are entering the field of future studies,
the transdisciplinary field that endeavors to facilitate for and
with young people, a cultural renewal, inspired by the hopes and
dreams of these young people. Youth
futures work allows space for the diverse futures that young people
would like to create, for a world that would go beyond symptom
treatment into a place of hope, renewal, potential and creativity, a
place where a society might reflect the health, not the symptoms, of
its members, and where the young people drew physical, emotional and
spiritual sustenance, not poison.
One is reminded of a verse by Rudolf Steiner written over 75
years ago which suggests an ideal or motto of social ethic:
The healthy social life is found
When in the mirror of each human soul
The whole community finds its own reflection
And when in the community
The virtue of each one is living.
As a global society we need
urgently to begin a dialogue about new ways of listening to our
young people and working with them to reshape our futures and
create, out of the ashes of traditional wisdom, new diverse cultures
worthy of human nature.
