This
is a question posed by Zygmunt Bauman in his book, Liquid Love. I think this question is at the heart of the
preservation of cultural identity. Cultural identity as a lived experience has
needed a space in which these experiences can be lived out, and shared with
others. Traditionally this space has been a physical space and this is the
particular space I will dwell on as opposed to the virtual space that modern
technology has created. The physical space is important because of the fact it
has housed the physical body, which human beings have needed in order to exert
influence upon the world. Culture has been the framework in which embodiment can
be active and participative. Societal norms, values, and traditions as pillars
within the culture have informed those of a particular culture on how to
function cohesively with others within the same culture. This itself has made
living simpler in that when the people who have been culturally inculcated the
same as we have been are expected to conform in action and not act erratically
or in unexpected ways. This is when we can sleep easy at night as there is a
trust established; when, in the words of Jordan B Peterson 'chaos has been
explored and turned into order', physically and metaphysically through culture.
And because, as Bauman puts it, ‘chaos
has no legitimate family, it is illegitimate. Order is called upon, birthed as
it were’ which suggests that when the order of explored territory and
established culture is not preserved then entropy will easily take over and all
order be reverted back to chaos.
And so, again, Bauman’s question ‘How
to then handle the stranger?’
When
strangers knock at the door of our explored territory, asking to be let in, how
have different societies answered this knock? Two ways namely,
anthropophagically or anthropoemically. The anthrophagic response means to eat
the person; this can be literally through cannibalism or figuratively by
devouring their culture and assimilating them into ours; allowing them to keep
those aspects of their culture that won’t change or stand in stark competition
to the already existing culture. The parts of the culture that cannot be
digested by that society are sacrificed as a sort of cultural dowry. The
anthropoemic response is the one where the stranger is vomited out; they are
rejected in their entirety and not allowed within the city gates; they remain
in the forest, the wilderness, chaos itself.
Refugees are this modern day stranger who have
had to leave their physical territory and to seek succour and asylum in other
territories. Immigration has been a touchy, contentious subject because when
the stranger is allowed in without assimilation, the stranger can pose as a
threat to the cultural identity because the stranger would be unpredictable;
destabilizing society and potentially placing the citizens in harm’s way. In Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind, he goes into detail
about why immigration laws are important and how he rejects the idea of open
borders. Gad Saad immigrated to Canada himself from Armenia so he is no
stranger to displacement, yet he articulates the importance of the preservation
of a host country’s cultural identity. Gad Saad quotes Salim Mansur on the
immigration of people from Islamic nations.
‘The flow of immigration into Canada from around
the world, and in particular the flow from Muslim countries, means a pouring in
the numbers into a liberal society of people from cultures at best non-liberal.
But we know through our studies and observations that the illiberal mix of
cultures poses one of the greatest dilemmas and an unprecedented challenge to
liberal societies such as ours; when there is no demand placed on immigrants
any longer to assimilate into the founding liberal values of the country to
which they have immigrated instead; a misguided and thoroughly wrong-headed
policy of multiculturalism encourages the opposite… We may want to continue
with a level of immigration into Canada annually that is about the same as it
is at present. We cannot, however, continue with such an inflow of immigrants
under the present arrangement of the official policy of multiculturalism based
on the premise that all cultures are equal when this is untrue. This policy, is
a severe, perhaps even a lethal, test for a liberal democracy as ours… We
should not allow bureaucratic inertia to determine not only the policy but the
existing level of immigrant numbers and source origin that Canada brings in
annually. We have the precedent of how we selectively closed immigration from
the Soviet bloc countries during the Cold War Years, and we need to consider
doing the same in terms of immigration from Muslim countries for a period of
time given how disruptive is the cultural baggage of illiberal values that is
brought in as a result. We are, in other words, stoking the fuel of much unrest
in our country, as we have witnessed of late in Europe. Lest any members wants
to instruct men that my views are in any way politically incorrect or worse, I
would like members to note that I come before you as a practicing Muslim who knows
out of experience from the inside, how volatile, how disruptive, how violent,
how misogynistic is the culture of Islam today and has been during my lifetime,
and how it greatly threatens our liberal democracy that I cherish since I know
what is its opposite.’
The
stranger described above is the courteous one, the one who stands at the door
and knocks asking to be let in. There is another stranger, the one who kicks
down doors and barges right in. War, colonialism and conflict have been avenues
of the annihilation of cultural identities, in order to weaken the society
being preyed upon. A warfare tactic that has been utilised to undermine
cultural identity is through the raping of women in a society. What this does
is to introduce the stranger or the foreign at the genetic level tainting
societal identity with hybridization. The Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan is
notorious for having employed this particular tactic effectively. There are
approximately 16 million men in the world who carry his gene. The Qing dynasty
ruler, Giocangga, has 1.5 million men carrying his gene alive today. Jonathan
Pageau of The Symbolic World podcast
describes how societies have dealt with infiltration; through the strengthening
of the society through efficacious leadership such as through a ruler or a
king. The king builds up an army that can protect the society from strangers
making their way forcefully into their lands. One of the ways the citizens
repay the king for his leadership and protection is paying a sexual tax, to the
king. The king or chief gets to choose anyone within the society to copulate
with. He is allowed a harem or concubinage like King Solomon. ‘jus primae noctis’ is latin for ‘right of the first night’ where a king
or noblemen had the right to have sex with a woman on her first night.
Naturally, the husband would not be too thrilled by this cuckoldry but that was
better than strange men from strange lands having their wives. In this way, the
cultural identity of the society is preserved as the king or noblemen are still
one of them.
Mobutu
Sese Seko (born Joseph –Dériré) was a dictator who ruled Zaire through a coup.
It is believed that he had sex with all his subordinates’ wives (mandatorily).
This was a way to reinforce his power by ensuring the loyalty of his men, that
they should withhold nothing from him and serve him completely. His new,
self-given name, is said to mean ‘the cock
that is above all the hens’. So sex itself has been used to maintain
cultural identity.
How to then handle the stranger?
In
psychology, there is a term called the
parasite stress response which is responsible for producing prejudices
within people to create an aversion to new people because of the potential
pathogens that they may be carrying. Smallpox, Measles, Influenza and the
Bubonic Plague have been responsible for the substantial decrease in population
of the San people in Southern Africa, aboriginal groups in Canada, Aztecs of
Mexico, Native Americans of North America. These diseases usually showed up
coincidentally when Europeans showed up on boats. The disgust effect has
developed in human beings to prevent us from ingesting items that will make us
sick but also to prevent us from being in contact with people who may be
carrying harmful pathogens. Hitler capitalized on the disgust affect of the
Germans to carry out Nazism. There was a booklet Der Jude Parasite (The Jew as World Parasite) that was circulated
in order to preserve the cultural identity of the Aryan race, by turning the
Jewish people into the stranger. In this case, the Jew is vomited out (into
concentration camps) and exterminated (systemically eaten). Nazism is a clear
illustration of Carl Jung’s Enantiodromia
which is a principle that states the superabundance of any force inevitably
produces its opposite. When Nazi Germany went to the extreme of eradicating the
non-Aryan, they themselves became the scourge of the earth; the uber stranger
to the rest of the world.
We
have witnessed what happens in the 20th century when cultural
identity is preserved at all costs. We have also witnessed with the silences of
tribes whose voices are absent on the earth how when the body is killed, the
culture is killed as well. When the spirit of a place is gone; the
archaeologist is left to piece the remnants together.
How to then handle the stranger?
Hannah
Arendt in her essay, ‘on humanity in dark
times’ answers this succinctly when she says ‘through the lens of our humanity’. The word she uses is philanthropia which is the love of man
and she says it manifests itself in a readiness to share the world. Zygmunt
Bauman says ‘openness to others is the
precondition of humanity in every sense of the word’.
