meggi's cultural adventures and understandings

I've recently been thinking a lot about culture and stereotypes, the way we perceive other cultural traditions and norms, and the judgments we make based on those observations. This was spawned by three events in particular. The first being my little exchange about the confederate flag, the second being the New Years day events I was able to participate in here in Razlog, and the third was a movie I recently watched.

There have been many times when living in the South was not something of which I was proud. There are scores of shameful things in the history of the South. But some of those tragically embarrassing events have made the South a stronger, braver people.

It's true that Southerners are unique. Some people look at this unique region and see only the bits of it's heritage upon which they can look down their noses in scorn. I have been in enough places to know that economic and social isolation of a culture bring out behaviors, habits, and social norms that another culture might consider backward. Who is wrong? Them for being 'backward' (which is a relative term, isn't it?) or us for our inability to accept their cultural heritage and understand the ingrained and perhaps hidden reasoning behind it? I do not think it takes a degree in anthropology (I dare say it may not help at all) to see that each culture and subculture develops out of it's history. To see the beauty in the growth. To see the pride of survival. To understand that not all members of a culture agree with the foulest members.

I recently watched Cold Mountain for the first time. There are a lot of Civil War movies. Many of those movies show the brutality of the whole war without playing up either side. In any war flick, the most effective approach of evoking emotion is to show the humanness, the pain and loss not of the soldier, but of the human. For example, Pearl Harbor, The Patriot, Gone with the Wind, and of course, the scene in Legends of the Fall were Brad Pitt's character curses God as his brother dies a terrible death at the hands of the first World War. Cold Mountain brilliantly depicts the human pain and loss that are an intrinsic part of war. More than that, it shows how our trials make us stronger, more capable people. Ruby, Renee Zellweger's character says, "This whole situation is man's bullshit... They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, "Shit, it's raining!" At another point in the film, Nicole Kidman's character says, "What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it." We get ourselves into situations that effect us and everyone around us, then we complain about them. Thank God for the people who understand that the mistake is to learn nothing, to grow no stronger, or braver, or wiser. I thank God for those people in my life who remind me that the lesson is in the journey.

I will always be proud of who I am and where I was raised. I spent the first thirteen years of my life in the most "backward" part of America I've ever been in - and I've been in a few places. Northern California, while astoundingly beautiful, is not a very culturally or economically progressive region. It suffers from regional isolation and a weak economy. Unemployment, cost of living, and violent and sexual assault rates are generally a bit high there. But I'm proud of the heritage I have there. I'm proud to know that I'm the fifth generation in my father's family to be born in one little town. Those decades have built a legacy that my name will carry with me for years to come.

As much as I feel connected to Northern California, I also feel myself a part of the South. I have lived in Middle Tennessee nearly half of my life. I've lived there long enough to see it's beauty and it's faults. Spend some time in Nashville and you'll see the consequences of the most dangerous human emotion, complacency. Sure, you'll see hate, jealousy, and racism, but I'm convinced complacency is Nashville's biggest problem. You will also experience a Homeric sense of hospitality, a tendency to feel and give and give warmth under even the most trying times, and an undying, unyielding, and perhaps too rarely questioning faith. Southerners have a perhaps naive faith in many things, from weather reporters to politician, from their church to The Church, that UT will win and Vandy will lose, or vice versa. Sometimes it is based on experience, more often it's based on blind and unrealistic hope. But Southerner's have learned to grasp onto faith. Centuries of misery beyond reason have caused them to find something to which they can cling.

History shapes the future, furthermore, history shapes today. A culture, like a person, is shaped and defined by it's history. We may fight against what we once were, or have grown from it, or have become debilitated by it, but in any case, it has shaped us. What we say, the choices we make, the laws we create, the literature we write, the verses we sing, the way we dress, the sounds that slip off of our tongues, our idioms and idiosyncrasies, or perspectives and prejudices, for better or worse everything that shapes our individual and cultural identities is molded by our histories. I'm proud of who I am, so I must accept where I've been as an individual and as a member of a culture.

Yes, I know I left out the whole bit about Razlog, it's on the way... To be continued...