SGK

Well, I wrote this to post, it turned INTO phpbb_a bit of a long essay and I decided not to post it, then I read the silly post from girlfriday (which I know was written tongue in cheek) which seems to be saying that because Anthony doesn’t believe Britain has a specific culture he doesn’t have a right to exist, so I decided to post it. Sorry it’s so long winded.

The arguments about what a culture is seem to stem from people having different definitions of the word culture. It is one of those words that people use to block a counter argument, like democracy, or European, and I agree with Anthony that some people use it as a way of attacking immigrants, presumably whilst hopefully avoiding the racist tag.
So first, what does culture mean? Anthony’s dictionary describes it as ‘the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group’, mine says, ‘the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people or other social group.’
Similar, but not the same, and since a dictionary is only the works of a person trying to define what people mean, this is what I think culture means in this context:
It is the way things are done.
Simple as that really. Most people seem to mix up culture with tradition. Tradition can be a part of culture, but culture isn’t tradition. When people are looking to define a culture, they look for a list of things which are done by most people and have been done since time immemorial, then they take that list and consider which items are unique to arrive at the definition of the culture. All they end up with is a list of tourist novelties, like the changing of the guard.
People who use culture as a weapon against immigration are usually talking about tradition, which makes their argument shaky. Most traditions are also surprisingly recent. For example, the Christmas tree is considered British culture, but it was brought over from Germany. If the British stopped having Christmas trees, would we have lost a part of our culture, or regained a part?
What about eating turkey, a non-indigenous bird, at Christmas? Where is the difference between turkey and curry? What makes one a valued tradition that is a part of British culture and what makes one an unwelcome intrusion that can never be a part of British culture, except in a watered-down, multi-cultural version of it?
Perhaps it would be better to stick to fish and chips, because that’s traditionally British, isn’t it? Yet the chip comes from the potato, which didn’t arrive in Britain until the 1600s, and the chip wasn’t invented for another hundred years, probably in Belgium and probably didn’t arrive in Britain until the 1800s. Fish and Chips as we know it today didn’t even get going until 150 years ago.
So when does something foreign become something British? How long does it take for something to become traditional? Much of the pageantry and tradition in Britain is quite modern. It is a modern idea. In the more distant past people did things according to what was best and what would improve their lives. We are living in a time when things are changing with lightning speed and people talk about the social shock of this, but nevertheless talking about preserving a tradition that goes back centuries is to misunderstand how people viewed that action at that time.
The harvest was probably one of the major events of the year in times gone by, it was a vital moment in most cultures, and many traditions grew up around it. However, it is hard to claim that the harvest is a part of British culture today. In the past, it was a part of the culture because it was necessary. Today, other things have taken its place.
Most people using culture as a part of their anti-immigration argument also link it to Dark Age Britain, where the use of the word culture falls down completely. The very first post brought in the question of the indigenous culture. ‘Indigenous’ is something that can be applied to places like New Zealand, or the USA, but it is nonsense to use this argument in Britain.
Firstly, the English are not indigenous, so to link this with the validity of culture means that any English based cultural element should sit alongside that person’s ‘curry is not British’ viewpoint. Before the Scots get too smug, most of them are foreign invaders too. So unless people are advocating handing over the entire islands to the Welsh and the Highlanders, moving back to Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark and goodness knows where, it’s time to re-think that angle.
Secondly, practically nothing of the culture of that time has anything to do with our culture today (or 1930s Britain, or 1950s). The Angles, Saxons and Jutes that arrived were Pagan, spoke a quite different language, lived a different lifestyle in every aspect (unless you’re some kind of subsistence farmer) and had no sense of national unity.
To suggest that eating curry or having African drums in church is a betrayal of our culture as related to these people is a nonsense.
The other thing about culture is why do we feel a need to define it as something unique? It isn’t. The English language is a part of the British culture. It being also a part of the Australian culture doesn’t detract from that. In this I disagree with Anthony’s point of view. Admittedly defining a culture is all about comparisons, differentiating the way something is done with how others do it, but it is the combination of everything in life that constitutes a culture.
Equally, it works the other way round. Because curry comes from India, doesn’t mean it can’t be a part of British culture too. Just like practically everything else people think is British.
The idea that we shouldn’t let it happen here just because ‘they’ wouldn’t let it happen ‘there’ really is infantile. Things happen for reasons, people make choices. The British like their curries, the Indians don’t eat beef. My favourite, the vindaloo, was invented to please the tastes of the Portuguese. Is it a Portuguese dish or an Indian dish? Should we be criticising the Portuguese for not putting more mint sauce on their lamb since we have port as our official after-dinner drink? Time to put the silly-head away.
A culture relates to a defined group. The larger I make that group, the more sub-groupings I include, the more general I make the definition. Each step becomes more limited until some would say it is too large to make sense. Anthony believes Britain is too great to be classed as a single culture. I would disagree. Consider that the British drive on the left. This distinguishes them from most of Europe and much of the world, it is something that affects daily life, and it is a part of the culture. It is a monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, bound together by the English language, a love of humour, sport, television and, unfortunately, soaps.
The fact that some of these apply to other countries is irrelevant. This is just a few things and the combination is not repeated anywhere (alright, Australia and New Zealand, but there are other aspects...)
However, in all that, many individual cultures are lumped together. The English culture is different to the Welsh culture, the north English to the south, west of the Pennines to the east. It is a matter of personal opinion how large a group can become before it no longer has a specific culture and also how small it is before its differences to its neighbours can no longer be defined as cultural differences.
One example of the way culture is used as a political term is when people talk about a European culture. My culture is a European culture, but it is not the European culture. I don’t have siestas, talk Polish, ski down the Alps at the weekend, or any number of other things, so I find it a nonsense that we are all lumped together INTO phpbb_one. It’s meaningless.
However, there will be those that think the same about Britain and those that think there is a distinctive European culture.
Our culture will always be changing and we are powerless to prevent that. Internet has changed many people’s lives dramatically and therefore their culture. Trying to halt that change is to attempt to kill culture and turn life INTO phpbb_one big tradition. It won’t work.
The important thing is that we are free to choose those changes. If the British have adopted curry, then fine, that doesn’t harm the British culture any more than eating After Eight mints. (Chocolate is not indigenous either). To harp on about this sounds racist and distasteful (pun intended!) to the casual listener.
This is the adoption by the British culture of an aspect from another culture which its people like. The danger I see is where a new culture is introduced by a new group which is not adopted by the British culture but takes its place geographically on the island and lives alongside and yet within.
To go back to the Dark Ages, the British culture was wiped out by the invading English and pushed to the island’s extremities; those remaining British enclaves lost their culture and adopted the English one, whilst the remaining Britons became the modern Welsh. A new ‘invasion’ of non-integrated groups could ultimately draw new political lines across the island (just like the Welsh border did then) if those groups don’t integrate.
When the Danes invaded and settled centuries later, they integrated. The lines on the map were temporary and the cultural aspects were, to varying degrees, adopted. I know this can only ever be a loose analogy, but for me the issue is integration on the one hand, prevented by an establishment that refuses to insist on it, and the freedom to be able to openly say which aspects of another culture we like, will accept, don’t like or reject. Political correctness and the accusation of racism prevent this in many cases, leading to feelings of resentment.