Culture and society and ''ad meliora''

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

I have been thinking about this idea of culture, society, and
so called, blood and soil…around here I have many complain
about the loss of culture, specifically white culture…
as I have noted before, no one around here can actually tell
me what ‘‘white culture’’ exactly looks like… but in some unknown
fashion, this idea of culture is being threatened by other cultures…
More than one person has complained about how whites and their
culture will become a minority at some point upcoming…
and yet, no one who has made such a complaint, has shown us,
first, if this is even so, and secondly, what difference does it make?
The unspoken, assumption here is that in some fashion, again,
never explained, that somehow white culture is superior to all other
cultures… This is a classic case of bigotry/prejudice… that somehow
one’s own culture is superior to all other cultures…how this is so,
is never actually shown…

But let us try something slightly different… So, what exactly is
culture? one description has a slightly different take…
Culture is really a societies habit carried into the future…
culture is really habit solidified… but habits, as we know from
our own habits, can be either good or bad, depending on the habit…
and plenty of our habits have no real basis in being a positive thing…
our habits can be either helpful or not… having addictions, such
as the cigarette habit, is clearly not healthy… nor is eating junk food,
plenty of our habits are not only not helpful but actually downright
dangerous… and that is all that is passed on in cultures…
habits…so the preservation of our culture is really just the
preservation of our habits, good or bad… (I thank Lewis Mumford
for this insight)

so, part of the human question becomes this, what habits/culture
do we have that is actually worth passing onto the next generation…
but interestingly enough, this overcoming of habits, that we all engage
in as adults, to eat healthier, exercise more, read more, get more
sunshine, are an attempt to overcome our own bad habits, which is
nothing more than culture…
I have heard it said by CEO’S in business, that we must create
a ‘‘Winning culture’’’ which is to say, overcoming bad habits that
limit our ability to make profits…

and so, with this in mind, I ask, what habits/culture are actually
habits worth keeping in our theory of culture/habits?
So, which American culture/habit is worth keeping and which ones
should we reject/overcome? I have heard it said that America is
schizophrenic, that we are of two minds and the clash between those
two mind sets have damaged America in very profound ways…
One path or part of our culture is the prejudice/bigotry path…
America was born in bigotry and prejudice… read the constitution
and note that a black American was worth 3/5 of a white American…
that is basic bigotry…and our continuation of ‘‘that Peculiar institution’’
lead us to a terrible Civil War… and the segregation laws and Jim Crow
laws of America, another habit, another aspect of culture… are those
laws, part of the culture that the defenders of American culture,
want to continue? Do the defenders of ‘‘White culture’’ want to
continue that habit/culture of the allege superiority of Whites?

So, I believe that the supporters of ‘‘White culture’’, indeed supporters
of culture itself, realize that defending culture is really defending
habit, really defending tradition… to support this idea of culture,
is to say that culture is really the continuation of tradition…
culture and tradition are really the same thing…but that leads us
to the question of change? How does change in either/or culture,
tradition happen? What is the mechanism for change in a culture/
tradition?

Here we might have scientific change as defined by Thomas Kuhn
help us understand change in a society or a culture… For Kuhn thought
that science was uniform up to a point, and then because of
discrepancies, social, political, economic or philosophical,
that force us to examine our values, beliefs or culture…
and within those discrepancies, it forces us to rethink…
for example, the same thing happened with Einstein…
the discrepancy that drove his creating the theory of relativity,
was the modest one of the orbit of Mercury… according to the
theories of the time, the orbit of Mercury was wrong and no one
knew why or how? Most scientists simply ignored that discrepancy
as being within the margin of error… to lay this out in terms of
points we have already made… the idea of the difference in
the orbit of Mercury wasn’t a problem because it was part of the
culture that scientists accepted… it was nothing more than habit,
that allowed scientists to ignore that modest difference in the
orbit of Mercury… the thing about Einstein was that he didn’t accept
that habit, that culture within science that allowed the orbit of
Mercury to remain out of sync, within the current theories
of science…In other words, Einstein didn’t accept the
habit or culture of the science of the day… he overcame
that habit/culture that existed… in other words, he rebelled
against the habit/culture of the science of the day… he didn’t accept
that habit or culture and by doing so, he changed science forever…
as Kuhn pointed out, science was unformed until it wasn’t…
and that change within science, was done by those who
challenged the current culture/habit of the day…
change in science, is often rapid because of the nature of science…
as Kuhn pointed out, that often within three generations of a discovery,
like the theory of relativity, the old theories/habits are discarded
and the new theories are put in place… and the new theories
become the new habit, the new culture of science…
change within science is often chaotic, rapid, creating confusion
and anger within that community… until the new ideals become
habit, part of the culture… and then science becomes static
and unchanging until the next change in the habits/culture…
change within science is unpredictable and erratic, random,
full of chance…there is no rhyme or reason within the changes
within the scientific community… and the same is true within
the state/society/the culture of any particular state/society…
the same theory that drives scientific change, also dictates
the changes within the habits or culture of that society…

So, let us put this into real life… the current battle between
those who praise the past, our traditions, our culture,
and those who want to change that culture/traditions…
we can reduce this argument in terms to the ‘‘WOKE’’
problem within America… many here have argued against
being ‘‘WOKE’’, but they don’t offer us anything outside
of following the culture/traditions… but that opposition to
‘‘WOKE’’ is really a call to continue the past traditions of
prejudice and bigotry… which is present within our
own culture and society…do we remain within traditional
culture and society and continue this prejudice and bigotry?
or do we overcome it?

do we follow the Enlightenment ideal of the idea that is
the heart of the Declaration of Impendence,

‘‘That all men are created equal’’

or do we deny it, and remain tied into tradition and culture/habit?

I return to an old idea of mine, in which we think in terms
of the modern world being nihilistic or do we engage
with its opposite, which is ‘‘Ad meliora’’ which is ‘‘towards the
better things’’

in the next post:

Kropotkin

1 Like
2

So, in thinking about this idea of culture, society and
those who oppose it and those who support it…
as you may recall, I call culture, habit…
and those we build statues to, moments to, where
they among those who supported culture/tradition
or where they among the ones who attacked the habits/
culture/traditions of that state/society?

MLK was a recent example of one who we build statues to today,
and was he in favor or against the culture, the traditions of the day?
Clearly, he was against the traditions of that culture/those habits
of his day… and we can see every person who advance the
culture, traditions, the society of the day, were the ones who attacked
those habits which drove that society/state… Socrates, Jesus,
Mohammad, Luther, Einstein, MLK… each of them of an example of people
attacking the habits and culture of the society they lived in…every
great change within a society/state arises from those who don’t accept
the status quo, the prevailing habits/culture of the time…
greatness, as we have seen comes not from defending the culture
or habits of that society/state, but from attacking those habits and values
which defines a culture/society…

let us take a look at Einstein…

In 1895, Lord Kelvin is supposed to have said, not likely, but
in any case, he was supposed to have said,

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains
is more and more precise measurements’’

and yet, 10 years later Einstein blows that all up…
instead of being the ‘‘end of physics’’ it was and still is,
the age of physics… because the habits of the age were
shown to be lacking, to be wrong…and was Einstein
a defender of the faith? Did he hold to the practices and
habits of science that he had been trained in? NOPE…
and that is the point… as with the next person I will examine,
that of MLK… did he accept or deny the habits/culture of his state/society?
We know the answer to that question… and what about Socrates or Jesus
or Luther? Not a one of them were proponents of the status quo, they didn’t
accept or practice the habits of their state/society… they were about moving
past the current habits of that culture/state…

think about Luther, for example…within a couple of decades, the entire
face of Europe had changed in response to his ideas… which were not
in favor of the habits/culture of that state/society…progress and advancement
in the name of that society/culture didn’t lie within the acceptance of those
habits/culture… no, the advancement of the culture came as an
attack on that particular culture… and therein lies the secret of
a society/state/culture movement into ‘‘ad Meliora’’ toward the better…
it takes an attack on the culture, not an acceptance and promotion
of that particular culture/state… every single advance within a state/culture
begins with an attack upon the status quo or the attack on the habits
of that state/culture… Newton and Einstein made an attack on the
customs, habits and theory of their particular culture…and in doing so,
they have advanced the theory of science into being better being able
to account for the information that society/state had… or said this way,
the advancement of Einstein and Newton, came within ‘‘ad meliora’’
toward the better…

and the prior beliefs of that culture? are they nihilistic?
in the sense of holding people from having the correct understanding
of their culture or society, then yes, those beliefs are nihilism…
because they hold people back from understanding the true reality
of their lives… removal of values and beliefs that are wrong, that does
improve the culture… habits that are wrong or lead us to incorrect
values/beliefs are by their nature, nihilistic…

With each new creator of new values and theory, they advance the
cause of being human…and that is a positive, not a negative…
and negative is nihilistic, and positive is ‘‘ad meliora’’

Kropotkin

1 Like
3

Middle positions ignored:

  1. one could be defending positive facets of culture

  2. one could keep some things/remove others

  3. examples from the past all negative, skewing the argument

Culture = habits = bad habits — culture is not merely habit - In includes meaning, social cohesion, institutions, art/music/etc., language, symbols and more. This reduction of culture to habit frames the whole thing negatively.

He assumes that if you want to keep parts of culture, this means you have to feel superior to other cultures perhaps to other races. This need not be the case.

He frames the issue as

tradition = prejudice

change = equality.

Well, a lot of change in society has led to greater class gaps. As one counter example.

Kuhn does not support his thesis, in fact he resisted the idea that paradigm shifts led to improved morals. Science and morals are different areas. Also, it’s not clear that older paradigms in science are worse. But more possible models gives more avenues for research. But regardless, science and morals are different realms.

All sorts of traditions in the finance world, in the privatization of government and war and the intelligence services have led to greater expenses and greater gaps in income and the making of the military industrial complex even more palpable. The weakening of government oversight of business. (We have Reagan the Bush boys and yup Clinton to thank for this) Increasingly harsh reprisals against whistle-blowers (we have Obama to thank for this one) Change can go in any direction.

But more importantly, these two posts are polemic more than philosophical argument. In other words we can expect this kind of rhetorical and not remotely rigorous style from politicians.

2 Likes
4

Correct and I agree. We must embrace a new culture, the world as it is currently is forlorn garbage.