by Andrew Singer
March 31, 2008
What is the relationship between culture and the environment in Europe? To approach this question, let us ask firstly, how does culture function in the EU and then, how is this being developed with an eye toward our shared environment in future?
Here in Europe, culture is most prized. This year (2008) has been designated as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, and from a socio-political viewpoint, the European Union certainly takes its culture seriously: the EU’s Culture programme (2007-2013) has a budget of €400 million for projects and initiatives “to celebrate Europe’s diverse cultures and enhance appreciation of our shared cultural heritage.” We must begrudge the EU its bureaucratic double-speak when it comes to such a noble endeavour: the EU Culture programme “will help construct a shared European cultural space by developing cross-border co-operation between cultural creators, players and institutions across Europe… For the achievement of these objectives, the programme supports three strands of activities: cultural actions; European-level cultural bodies; and analysis and dissemination activities.”
Buried somewhere in those hundreds of millions of euros are the following two recognitions. Firstly, the EU acknowledges an idea – so persuasively and elegantly supported by such scholars as Joseph Campbell, James Frazer and Robert Graves – that Europe has something of a shared Ur-culture in its distant past. So EU cultural initiatives gently strive to strengthen conditions for this echo of unity to be fleshed out again, while strongly protecting the great cultural diversity present across today’s European map, as a basis for a future European identity. Secondly, the EU is banking on culture to foster stronger mutual regard, via cross-border exploration and celebration, to bring closer in spirit formerly antagonistic neighbours, as well as minority populations and labour immigrants.
This is all to the good of course. What is missing from this is any spark of vision which might make this emotionally important and beautiful to an average citizen. One can argue that such vision is unnecessary, that people needn’t know how they are being nudged together by shrewd continental cultural policy. And perhaps this is politically expedient as well, given certain nations’ traditionally strong sensitivity to cultural uniqueness and autonomy. But at some stage in its progress this will have to give way in the face of a brilliant cutural figure or movement, some new narrative which galvanizes Europe and forges identity anew at the continental level.
Such was the state of the US in the early 1800s, barely out of its loosely confederated stage, when Alexis de Tocqueville brilliantly observed that the US did not yet have a culture of its own and would only really take off when a narrative voice came along able to express its new and unique grandeur. This prediction was fulfilled soon after when Walt Whitman created a uniquely American poetry, liberating the constricted line to a length and vigour that matched the untrammeled landscape and promise of the New World, a tradition followed ever since in the improvisational jazz line, the long unbroken breath-line of beat and spoken-word poets, and so on.
Given this, can we gain any clues about a galvanizing narrative for Europe based on the EU’s above-mentioned twin recognitions of Europe’s shared cultural origin and the present need to bring European peoples closer together in spirit?
Let us trace back the origin of culture to see where we have come. Psychologist Geert Hofstede, a founder of the exciting field of Intercultural Communication, has usefully abstracted the word culture to mean “the software of the mind,” for examining the differences in assumptions and expectations across cultures. This builds upon the familiar meaning, prevalent by the mid-1800s, of culture as “the collective customs and achievements of a people,” which in turn evolved from a meaning earlier in that century of culture expressing “the intellectual side of civilization.” Going back a further three hundred years, around 1510 we find the idea first stated that culture is something “[achieved] through education.” But in fact the word culture originates in pre-Elizabethan English as “the tilling of land,” from the Latin cultura pp. of colere, to tend, guard, and till – i.e. to cultivate. So the origin of culture is in our rituals and festivals of cultivation, i.e. the seasons and fertility of the land – and of ourselves. As we remove the artificial borders between European countries and unify our agriculture, it again becomes natural to regard these lands as contiguous – i.e. as belonging together, in rhythm and fate, in a single shared “cultivation.”
Now just as no one – or almost no one – is suggesting a return to a Europe of migrating tribes, nor is it practicable or desirable to hearken back to medieval superstition in our methods of cultivation. Progress is forward – and the European-level of organization to which we have arrived is the culmination of great advances toward harmonizing our often at-best frangmented paradigms of previous times. Just as it is a step forward to loosen and uproot the increasingly unneccessary boundary fences of our nation-states, so too can we look forward to the essentially healing role which culture holds for us in unifying our lands and our lives. It is not just the soil which becomes contiguous rather than fragmented in the new Europe, but now too ourselves.
It is obvious that environmental maintenance is necessary as a basis for cultural maintenance. Thus in extreme (but sadly no longer rare) cases, an entire culture can be threatened by some new environmental disadvantage. Destruction of forest and other habitats, mass poisoning of rivers and lakes, rising flood waters, shifting ecologies, species extinction, and mass displacement resulting from natural resource foraging are all placing massive, at times irreversably crippling, strains on many of the world’s cultures.
Assuming a culture is relatively safe from such emergencies, as most European cultures presently are, then we can address the second goal, of bringing our cultures closer together in spirit. We can best view this simply as a further point on the same continuum – i.e. a healthy mode, rather than an emergency mode, of environmental maintenance. In this regard a UK student, Aditi Chowdhary, recently made the following observation:
"A closer look at our religious traditions and rituals (especially in Asian societies) reveals a deep respect and reverence of nature in all its forms. Hindusim and the rituals within it show close harmony and conservation of natural resources although this might not seem obvious. For instance many ritual celebrations or "poojas" require five local fruits and plant leaves as offerings to the dieties. This simple tradition might have been envisaged to encourage cultivating useful plants and vegetation. Similarly making food offerings to animals before consuming the festvities is a common practice followed till date. This just goes to show how harmoniously linked culture and ecological preservation are. All we need to do is look closely!"
This is clearly true as well in traditional European cultures – on the level of the tribe, and later (in healthy cases) of the nation, culture fostered local environmental care. Coupled with the acknowledgement that we are moving forward, this would predict the re-emergence of proper reverence and care for our seasons and lands in a healthy shared future Europe, grown up from the boundaries of our little turfs. And as if on cue we are greeted with just such a set of problems which can only be solved cooperatively: waterway pollution, airborne genetic mutations, new diseases shared through newly-unified agricultural systems, common resource challenges, the pollution of our skies and so on. To be sure there are “political” approaches to such problems – but to be lasting and heartfelt what is so clearly needed to address such shared needs is a “culture change” among our various nations. Moreover, in a working future shared paradigm each local culture can then be responsible in its own unique way based on its own geographical, climatic, lifestyle and other “cultural” differences, to each other and to maintaining the health of the whole.
UNESCO, in the report of its World Commission on Culture and Development, adds the following useful elements to this discussion:
"Humanity's relation to the natural environment has so far been seen predominantly in biophysical terms; but there is now a growing recognition that societies themselves have created elaborate procedures to protect and manage their resources. How can one take these procedures which are rooted in cultural values into account so that sustainable development becomes a reality? …
Sustainable development must be seen as an integral part of an ongoing process of culture where the needs of the present generation can be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Seen in this light, sustainable development is a multi-faceted concept.
Local ecological knowledge and traditional practice, long seen as obstacles to development, are increasingly recognised as offering solutions founded on generations of experimentation and observation. This relates to the question of conflict between modern science and traditional practices and beliefs. The challenge we face is to develop ways and means of resolving potential conflict situations. Any approach which does no more than simply address strictly biophysical exchanges between societies and the environment – the impact of the environment on Man and vice versa – is incomplete. Instead, we need a culturally diversified approach which takes account of different attitudes to culture, the environment and development."
And then, to its great credit, the UNESCO report takes this a step further:
"If one key idea had to be selected … then it would be: … “Development divorced from its human or cultural context is growth without a soul. Economic development in its full flowering is part of a people's culture.”
This is different from seeing culture as either a help or a hindrance to economic development, leading to the call to take cultural factors into account. Unlike the physical environment, however, where we dare not improve on the best that nature provides, culture is the fountain of our progress and creativity. Once we shift our view from the purely instrumental role of culture to awarding it a constructive, constitutive and creative role, we have to see development in terms that encompass cultural growth."
This is a startling observation. In other words, a healthy developing culture is not just a tool for social engineering of societies by manipulating the ideas contained within – i.e. culture is not properly just an organ of propaganda – however important the message, in the case of the environment, may be. In a deeper sense then, culture is a kind of ground of sympathetic magic whereby, establishing a healthy spiritual basis for delight in the harmonizing of souls, we achieve in our world the desired physical development corresponding to this state of spiritual health and harmony. Thus we unlock the real power of our diverse cultural heritages with this key to their interleaving.
William Butler Yeats put it this way: “[W]ithout culture or holiness, which are always the gift of a very few, a man may renounce wealth or any other external thing, but he cannot renounce hatred, envy, jealousy, revenge. Culture is the sanctity of the intellect.” This surely points the way to the underlying spiritual (i.e. cultural) development we need to make real progress toward each other in Europe today.
Yeats’ view may seem a tad aristocratic by now. From the prototypically European poet of the 20th century, W. H. Auden, we can get a more relevantly detailed expression of the question facing us today. Auden lived in Central Europe for a part of each year from 1958-1973, after spending a decade in Italy. As a Christian and as a great intellect keenly engaged in the issues of his day, this later Auden “hoped for the forgiveness that follows from suffering, and wanted reconciliation and unity to replace persecution, accusation, shame and guilt.” He “passionately celebrated national differences and cultural diversity,” yet warned that, “with an increasingly secularised outlook, people are losing their patrimony of a common symbolic language, and hence the shared comprehension that unites human beings into humanity.”
Whether the question is framed spiritually or politically it still remains: what can galvanize the harmonious collaboration of peoples; what inspiration can spark the necessary cooperation short of a pure and newly-shared narrative?
I suggest this galvanizing cultural spark – from whatever great European artist(s) of our near future it may come – will likely weave its narrative enthusiasically around the shared heritage of our common natural environment. We already see an emerging strand of this in, for example, the current post-classical-Disney era of children’s films: having exhausted our heritage of fairy tales and groping for a new mythology for our times, the film industry has latched onto the environment as exciting fodder for a new hero mythos which speaks to an international audience. Films such as “Ice Age,” “Happy Feet” and the like thrill exactly because they really do represent a creative, enthusiastic and relevant updating of the hero myth in terms which speak to us directly – as citizens and people – of waking up and saving a shared environment in a now culturally shared world.
So let the EU use its half-billion euros to promote equality and equity, to ensure the preservation of traditional culture, the promotion of social justice and sustainable livelihood. And as UNESCO suggests let us too not undervalue but trust in the deeper bedrock that our independent cultures represent in and of themselves. Our living cultures help in testing, tweaking and maintaining our sanity, health, and languages – and with these even the purity of our communication and of our intent itself – as we grow into one another in this exciting time of continental shift, in healing, and in the mutuality many feel instinctively to be a shared birthright whose age has rapidly come. How could this not affect positively our mutual working out of a reliably cleaner and safer shared environment in which we live?
