The Personality of Culture

The Evolution and Condition of Culture.

Quickly... let me apologize to a few folks before you begin reading this. There are very few among us who do not have a memory like that I'm going to ask you to recall. For those who do not, I am sorry for you. Forgive me for using this as a starting point but it is my prayer for you that you will someday either find someone who loves you like that or that you will someday be that person to someone else. Life can be hellishly random and harsh but in the absence of felt love there lies the opportunity to give love.



For a moment.... stop, take a breath...and read, slowly... let's forget the news, the budget, your struggles in relationships with loved ones, friends, etc. and how bad life can be... just for a few moments while you read this. Ignore the TV, radio, music, conversations and anything that can be distracting.

Here's a question and it is likely a painful one:

Is there someone you miss? 

Is there someone who you cherished as a child and then you experienced terrible loss when they died? Do you wish that you could have.... just 5 minutes more? If you can feel that emotion. If you can remember that person. If you can feel the angst and pain of their separation from your life... then I think you have the necessary emotion to take a short journey.

That loved one connected with you by the way they treated you. You miss them because their treatment toward you was their way of expressing their love for you. Their smile. Their peaceful demeanor. The way they talked to you... and listened to you. That sparkle in their eyes as they looked at you. The way they thought about you and surprised you with out-of-the-blue surprises. The times they would call you or send you a message. 

That person... 

...you miss them because of those reasons and probably a thousand similar examples. For a few moments, let's think about that person. Feel that love and yes, feel that pain. The pain proves the love was there.

For that cherished person from all those cherished memories, there is a word that describes the sum total of their actions. Character. Their character is that thing we all appreciate about a kind and loving person. We know character comes to us in many forms. 

Maybe you had a grandfather who would take you for rides in his old farm truck to feed cows. He would point and tell you the name of each cow as if each were an old friend. He made sure you were safe, made sure you had a snack and something to drink and encouraged your spirit when you remembered a cow's name by complimenting you on your knowledge. Maybe it was a grandmother who would welcome you in to visit and would drop everything to focus solely on you. That big warm hug that lasted longer than a breath made you stop for a minute and bask in the warmth of her loving embrace and maybe also give you a chance to smell the cookies she had been baking. Time stops when someone stops you to show you love. Maybe you never had the experiences I've just described but honestly, I'm willing to bet you would probably welcome them if given the chance. Each is just a glimpse of someone who does not judge you but instead loves you with their character. They have grown to understand what is truly important in life and for those brief moments they have with you, they embraced you, they included you, they loved you and that is an example of character.

Do you have that person's memory present before you? Did it bring a tear or did it make your lip quiver over the warm memory and then the reminder of the loss you feel now? Maybe the first memory that flashed into your mind made you hold your breath and then sigh. It wasn't their money, their possessions or what they did for a living... it was how they treated you. Their repeated expressions of love defined their character.

Keep that beautiful memory in mind. Think about how you would describe that person to others. You would offer the many examples of their character. In the course of conversation, just the memory alone brings back warmth and sadness. You may even have to take a breath, for a moment, as the emotions overwhelm you... but you do... you look at the person for whom you are sharing your memories and smile and maybe utter something like, "They were a wonder person"... and "I miss them so". 

Keep this in mind. It inspires us to express that same love to others in our lives. We cherish a parent, a child, a sibling or a friend and we express our love to them in various ways, and they, toward us. Without realizing it, our love and value of that person has become that very same emotional connection that they too feel about you as you did toward someone you cherished in your life.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had many relationships like that... and wouldn't it be nice if others felt that way about us? Wouldn't it be nice if we had loved so greatly and so deeply in our lives that we inspired others to do so once we were gone? I think deep down, we all want to be loved. I think when we lay dying and in taking our final breaths, we would want to tell those around us that we love them... and I think we would want those loved ones to have a legacy of wonderful memories to motivate them to tell us that they love us to. You often hear people say they wish they had just one more chance to tell someone "I Love You" but missed the opportunity. Character was why.

Dry your eyes... take a breath, regain you emotional balance. You've made it this far... you're doing well... so if you would, follow me for a while.

A man once said that he wanted people to remember him for his character. He left us decades ago. He didn't choose to go but he knew there was a risk that he would not be able to make the decision when he would go but he KNEW he needed to share the message in his mind and in his heart with you.

You've probably heard this quote, many times:

"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. "

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Try not to just dismiss that quote. It was about Dr. King's acknowledgement that judgement was passed daily on people of color but not on those without. That quote has inspired many and rings true still to this day but I think people forget that it comes in two parts. Everybody gets the first part about not being judged by the "color of their skin". That's certainly a statement that we can all get behind. Sure, there are good people of every color. Whether they are actors, politicians, comedians, social activists or just ordinary people who do/did kind things that gave the world hope that all was not lost...

...but then there is that other part that's not about color. You know, the part about being judged.... being judged by the "content of their character". Mr. King was very clear in this statement on two specific points and the second one carries more weight than the first.


Culture, as defined by Merriam-Webster, and for the sake of this discussion is given as:

"the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group".

So basically, if you take the warm embrace of a grandparent or parent and see how that love, caring and nurturing spirit has been handed down from one generation to the next, you have a culture. In our examples, a belief that nurturing a child by loving them, teaching them and promoting their spirit is simply a way to ensure the success of future generations. Good character (or bad I presume) that is handed down from generation to generation, becomes culture.

By the way, "Promote the Human Spirit" is a mantra I came up with back in 1994. I only claim creating it... I wish people would use it effectively in their daily lives. Take it. It's a good daily practice for dealing with people. All people.

OK... back to character.

We've all seen successful families and not-so-successful families. The ones where the parents are selfish and fail to support each other and then that failure is magnified in the children they bear. Many times in our society, government officials have to step in and pull those children from those homes and put them in foster care as a means to intervene and give the parents a chance to "reset" and do better. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Society, or the community of people collectively, wants to see success in each family as the alternative leads to breakdowns in society. Our culture wants to see success in each family so that in our society, we can have hope that success will continue in future generations. Even if you don't have any specific connection with a successful or unsuccessful family, you do see the effects it has on society in the form of foster care, legal wrangling in the courts over drug use, alcohol-abuse, physical altercations, overloaded courts and court cases dragging on for years. It does have an affect on society. All that legal wrangling is also very expensive and it is a drag on local state and even federal budgets. There is a social effect and a financial effect when families fall apart.. or better, when the character of people in those families is wrong for the families. It becomes a painfully obvious foreshadowing that the family will struggle and fall apart. The effects of a broken family don't always stop at just the one broken family. I think you would agree with me that a broken family leads to broken people that can spread like some airborne virus.

Through the ages, there have been many times, many stories of families being challenged by the evils of individuals and on a greater scale, society and in some cases, with political change. On the individual level, there are sometimes the family member commits a heinous act that changes the family forever. A murder, a death, a jail conviction, a divorce, a sickness and a myriad of other events can weaken or break the cohesiveness of the family for long periods of time or even forever. On a societal level, there are clashes between warring tribes, or fights over land, or mineral/farming rights and, again, many other regional conflicts. And then, the one that seems more obvious, nowadays, in the form of politics. Far too often, in many parts of the world, a leader decides to change the landscape either through ethnic-cleansing, genocide, enforced poverty and other evils. Regardless of which level in each of the previous conditions, the conflict arises, it affects people and with nearly no way to avoid it, affects their relationships within their families. 

Imagine a part of the world where a people are stolen away to a distant place and forced to create a product for an unknowing and uncaring ruler. Maybe thoughts of sweatshops in Asia come to mind. Maybe the sex trade that sees young women and men, stolen away, forced into an addiction to drugs and then abused until they are no longer of use by their captors and then killed and hidden away so as to remove the evidence of their inhumane acts that led to the tragedy. Or... maybe they don't succumb to their injuries, torture or treatment but are kept alive just enough to keep going... and by this, I mean they are kept in captivity to continue to perform as commanded by their captures: Slavery. Slavery has been an unsavory part of our history since as long as history books including the Bible have been around. Early parts of the Bible describe slaves used to help support a large or travelling household. Slaves were an integral part of the story of Moses when an entire group of people, based on their religious grouping, were used and abused to build large structures, empires even. Further on, there have been countless stories of kings and those who were either slaves or serfs, making their way through life under the thumb of another. Under those conditions, I think we all can agree that any effort to have a family would be futile, at best. An ugly part of the methods used by rulers, slave-owners, kings, etc. would often be to separate the men from the women, children from parents and employ them in various trades and efforts so as to make them more useful and often more productive. These separations, undoubtedly had lasting and scarring effects on their family units, if they were even allowed to have them.

But... what if not just one family was forced into separation and slave conditions, but a large group of people from similar cultures, stolen away and taken a great distance from their homeland? What if these people were separated as a family unit and forced into hard labor. What if the penalty for escaping was severe and included such things as beatings, whippings, rape and even death? What if they were also stripped of their dignity, their culture or even the very history of when they were free. What if those conditions created an environment where everything they knew or could have know was stolen away generation to generation to the point where they were lost? What would become of their customs, their traditions, their ability to love and be loved? 

My guess is that, over time, they would and DID lose those memories and traditions handed down from generation to generation. I think one would have a hard time disagreeing with the fact that these actions were intentional so that those held captive would be stripped of their culture and would only live to serve those who kept them captive... because they knew of nothing else. Their family traditions, history and even their ability to hold together a family of their own, would be lost forever.

How can one be a father, a mother, a grandparent, a source of inspiration and hope... if they never had a father or a mother, a grandparent or even someone who inspired them and gave them hope?

Even if they were to eventually gain their freedom, their lack of tradition would present itself as a culture that only knows harsh treatment and poverty. What would a person do, who knew little other than the trade they were taught in their enslavement? What if their ability to love and be loved, the ability to nurture and care for others had long ago been stripped from their ancestors? What should society expect from a person or a group of people who all shared this same experience? 

What happens? 

We have many examples. Too many, in fact.

 Our news media, when not frothing-at-the-mouth over the latest political doings and undoings, often reports on the terrible acts people commit. Murders, thefts, rape, abuse and the list goes on. Unspeakable acts committed by people who sometimes seem on edge of society in what some might consider a feral state, of sorts. These senseless acts often leave normal society shaking its collective head in wonderment how somebody could fall so far as to commit these acts and yet, if we peer into the lives of these people we can see where somewhere along the line, be it mental illness, indoctrination or poor/non-existent parenting, there were failures in their past that either spun them out of control or warped them to such a degree that compassion and empathy were far beyond their understanding.

I'm willing to bet that you probably know where I am coming from and where I am going with this train of thought: A society captures people, strips them of their culture and eliminates it and its traditions, over time, from generation to generation and then once a much later and distant generation is given back its freedom, has little, if any, culture to help establish how it will live, love and act. 

Now let's add one last piece to this puzzle. 

What if many in a society, and in this case, within that society, those who held the reins of captivity, who were forced to free those whom they held in captivity, simply continued on in society with retribution or even accepting that what they did was wrong? What if they still felt the need to oppress the previously captive group of people but now had to do so only so far as the government would let them? What if opportunities were held back? What if the people of this formally oppressed group with their newfound freedom were not allowed the true freedom to claw its way up to supporting itself? What if this group found overwhelming oppression despite its freedom? What could or should society expect from this group?

If a group of people have everything including their traditions, culture and even the means to hold one another in a family setting, stripped away, repeated, from generation to generation and then suddenly are "free", what should society expect?

If you can't get a quality education...
If you can't apply for a job because you don't have the necessary education..
If you can't afford safe and comfortable housing because you can't get a decent job...
If you cannot afford or receive quality healthcare...
If you cannot even be respected by others in society...

....or if you simply can't have any of these because your skin color or your heritage is ridiculed and discriminated against, what should society expect from you?

What would you do? Would you steal to support your hungry family? Would drink to numb the pain of poverty? Out of frustration and rage, would you force yourself onto others in an act of rape? Would you murder someone if they challenged your life, your property, your friends or your family? Would you turn to drugs if they were sold just outside your door and promised a feeling better than the misery you experience every day? Would you let people have sex with you for money to buy drugs that numb your mind from the misery of your miserable and hopeless life? Would you do the same just to put food on the table for your children? I'm reminded of a scene in the movie, "Forrest Gump" where his mother ultimately allows the school master to have sex with her to allow Forrest into school. He mimics the noises made by that bastard during the unseen but clearly heard by Forrest. We heard it too. We knew. We knew that poor mother made a selfless choice for the betterment of her son. 

Back to my point about the effect of this on a person.

Would all of this affect your mental health? Would a lack of education stunt your perspective and ability to understand and use education to navigate the struggles of life? Would you grow jealous of those who had plenty and you had nothing? Would you become enraged when a manager at a job treated your or someone else unfairly and you knew it was because of their race or skin color? Would you ignore it if a manager or co-worker groped you or made sexual advances toward you and complaining would mean you could lose your job? Would you have sex with someone in hopes that they would stay or worse, get pregnant to entrap them? Some people think that is acceptable. I do not. Would you?

...And when you had children, would you expect them to grow up to be loving, intelligent, rational and educated adults?

Clearly, people do.

So let's recap: 

We can relate to the wonderful character of someone who makes your heart ache in their loss. We have witnessed, all through history, how people have been stripped of their dignity, their culture and their ability to develop and appreciate character. We have seen how these people who have been stripped of their culture, have little support to build themselves up and continue to be oppressed in a modern society and yet modern society expects them to function in a normalcy that only those who are not oppressed experience. 

Why do we expect people to live and function at the same level when many are not afforded even the decency of the ability to achieve it? Is there a wonder why someone who is never afforded love, compassion, empathy, understanding, knowledge and education turns out struggling in life?

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking: "do you seriously want me to go abandon all caution and embrace someone who may only know to harm me?

No. I don't. 

Yes, there are violent and dangerous people out there and to that degree, yes, society can create monsters. The mind of someone can become broken. People can and do and will continue to commit unspeakable acts toward one another. Whether it is a murder committed on a dark and dangerous side street or a gutting of a company on Wall Street that causes massive layoffs, people do terrible things. No, there is little that mankind can do to undo its failures. When people become evil, it's likely that they spent a lifetime living up to that moment, being influenced to that moment and having their hopes and dreams vacated for them in such a way that their mind simply changes gears and shifts into a feral or worse mode of thinking. No, I'm not giving evil people or their acts a pass, here, but I am pointing out, that often, but not always, because I am not an expert on this field of study, but very often, the evil acts perpetrated by people are often motivated by an evil that befell them in their past. We often hear the "angry youth" scenario where somebody committed an act of violence upon others and we discover they had a warped childhood.

Corner an angry, aggressive dog, beating through the entirety of its life and what should you expect? It would like attack? What else would you expect it to do?

My wife Kathy and I, along with our family, used to be a foster family. We embraced it, we loved it and we were sometimes in fear of it. We came upon several children who were clearly angry far too early in life. Their lives were irreparably damaged by the evil influence their parents had on them. In one occasion, we cared for and loved to the best of our ability, two young boys who stayed with us for just over a year. They often acted feral. They would grab things, grab food and eat as if anything left on their plate would be taken from them. If they felt another child had been given preferential treatment, they would act out upon them. When they were angry, such as the times when they were forced to visit their biological mother, they would come back to our home and act out. On several occasions, they would throw objects through windows. We had a double-paned full-length glass, back door which one of the boys destroyed with a rock. Yes the financial aspect of that destruction was painful for us, we all quickly learned and realized that these boys were reacting to the actions of their mother. They wanted so bad to love and be loved by her but her actions left them hurt emotionally and ultimately, mentally.

They weren't the problem: they were the product.

On one occasion, the boys had just returned from a weekend with their "bio" mom. As per our usual methods, we would offer them snacks and something to drink because the mother often, had not. They were ravenous as if they had not eaten all weekend. Then we would take them into the back yard and kick the soccer ball around. They loved it but on one occasion, things did not go so well. We kicked around the soccer ball but one of the boys was struggling with his emotions. It was as if his poor face was in a storm. In his eyes, you could see conflict and his facial expressions didn't match that of a boy content with his weekend visit with his mom. He started acting up and we offered to play again, with him, after he took a quick nap. He wasn't usually too difficult to get to take a nap and he walked in with us and we tucked him in and let him sleep. We checked on him periodically and it was clear this little man was in desperate need of sleep but after an hour, we began to wonder if maybe we should wake him and let him play a little more. We always kept the doors cracked just a little but as Kathy pushed it open, a smell overwhelmed her and what she saw, she quickly identified. This little boy of just five years had smeared his own fecal matter across every surface he could reach. His room doubled as my office and had some workout equipment in it. He had effectively soiled every object in the room. Kathy called for me and without words, we both realized what had happened. Kathy shook her head and walked away. Without words, Kathy packed up the kids into one of the SUV's and took them for a drive. We had to minimize what had happened and it was important to do so. This young man, who at the age of five, still wore diapers because he was suffering from emotional issues and could not control his bowel movements. His poor nerves were shot. It was if he was suffering from a form of PTSD. Kathy and I had taken dozens of hours of training each year and yes, this very event, was a part of that training. Kids, in very specific and critical situations like this, would act out like this. We had been trained to minimize the reaction, show them love, clean them and everything, and minimize it all. My first step was to kneel down, look him into the eyes and calmly say, "hey, let's get you cleaned up so you can watch some cartoons". His poor eyes stormed of conflict and yet winced at the thought that somebody still might love him after what he had done.  I used the sprayer in their shower to "hose him off, as he had it all over him. I got him into some clean dry clothes and talked to him as we walked to the living room. I asked him what he wanted to watch... "Dora", of course, was his choice.

It took every baby wipe, every paper towel and all of the cleaning supplies we owned to clean that room but three hours later, it was done. Part of my childhood was spent on a farm and cows provided the odiferous training I would need to tolerate the smell of that bedroom. Kathy was of a more gentile upbringing and offered to take the children out for a while, so that I could apply my "expertise" of such conditions toward cleaning it. We make a good team.

As horrific as that event was, we used the training to work through it. Yes, he was a conflicted little boy and yes it was a cry for attention but the act, for whatever test it was for us, was a turning point. He trusted us more. He called Kathy "Mom" and he had a sparkle in his eyes when we talked with him. We had those two boys for thirteen months until the court system decided they should be returned to their mother. We, of course, disagreed, but it was not our place to involve ourselves in the legal battles. We had five other little ones to care for, so we relented.

The point of sharing this story is not self-serving. 

Please don't tell us that "we did a good thing". Yes it was a good thing to do but I'd prefer God say those things upon our entrance through the pearly gates. Would it not be awesome to hear Jesus tell us "Thanks for loving one another!" as we entered Heaven?

For the here and now, the important lesson is that the character of those young boys was influenced heavily by their mother. Their character, will develop out of the culture for which they grew. Our hope is that the one year and one month that they spent with us would somehow be a bright spot in their lives. That somehow, someday, when they are faced with a moral dilemma, the love they felt in our home, will somehow remind them of how important the right decision in that moment, will be.

The world is full of little boys and little girls like those two. As of this writing, they are teenagers. We have no idea how they are doing. You lose track once they move on. We pray they have a better life. Our fear is that it perpetuated and they are becoming what society fears. The seeds were sown at an early age and cultivated in an environment created by their mother. A cultivated culture of anger, hate and retaliation which will ultimately befall others, often innocent victims, who were unaware of the innocent mistake of standing too close to people harvested from such evil.

The world is full of good people and bad people. Evil is an influence upon us all. We compound our susceptibility to commit evil when we let selfish aspects of our character rise to the top. The ills of this world, the culture that harvests the anger and hate will not be changed overnight, over the course of a presidency nor will it even occur over the course of a lifetime... but it can take that first step, in every singular moment that God puts before us. Whether it be to let somebody cut in on an on-ramp, or to smile at the co-worker who has treated us poorly and gossipped about us behind our back or to love our children even through their failures. We can only engage a positive change, one simple act of love at a time. Maybe it's taking the time to explain a difficult situation for a child dealing with a bully at school or a mean teacher going through their own personal challenges. Compassion and empathy. 

If you have read this far, I thank you. I do not and did not promise an answer but simply wanted to have you examine something that you possess that others do not and see how the experience of that feeling made you a great person and how the lack of it can cause others to act poorly. I wanted to further offer my own examination of the problem when a group of people, due to their race, are stripped of the ability to learn how to love and be loved. It creates a culture of anger, hate and misogyny between races. 

My hope is that you recognize the importance of showing compassion and love toward not just those who you love, but to the unlovable, as well. Stop and think first before reacting. There are many in this world who exact evil upon others and the media is quick to highlight it... to perpetuate their own existence. Imagine a world of love, which I don't believe we will ever have... but if it were so, there would be no need for the media. One begets the other. Don't let it consume you with fear and anger. Focus on what you can do, how you can help others improve the "...content of their character."

Try to think with restraint. Look upon the lives of others with compassion, sympathy and empathy if you can fathom their pain. We cannot change the world but you can change the world around you. We are instructed to "love one another" and that command does come to us in a rather ambiguous manner and that was the intention. Whenever possible, whenever necessary, show one another a little kindness. Look past the skin color, the culture, the environment and when you can, love your fellow human. We all need love and we all need to love.

Thank you for your time.