Lecture by Morteza Mardiha: 'Our Cultural Specificities'

In the fields we discuss, it is difficult to prove anything. Prove in the sense that your interlocutor is persuaded and, despite not having accepted it from the outset, hears your proof, raises their hands, and says: I accept. In a simple division, our audience is of three types:

First. Someone who is more or less a supporter of mine.

Second. Someone who is more or less an opponent of mine.

Third. Someone who stands between these two.

The assumption is that in such scholarly exchanges, for instance a lecture or a book, we are dealing with the third group. With a group that has not sworn an oath of agreement or disagreement with anyone and has an aptitude for engaging with arguments. And even if they have thought contrary to the book or lecture, they might open a space for reconsideration.

Our Cultural Specificities:

I will begin my talk with a few preliminaries, because without these preliminaries, mutual understanding may not occur properly.

First preliminary:

Usually, the title of a lecture or book is, in the first instance, a very detailed and explicit name. For example, a book I have translated by one of the great French thinkers is: "Why Do Intellectuals Not Like Liberalism?" This is one way of naming.

There is also a type of naming that is more concise than this and faithful to the text. For instance, the title of one of my books is "In Defense of Politics." From the title, it is clear that I want to defend politics.

Sometimes naming goes one step further than this, and it is a pseudo-sentence or a phrase given to a book, interwoven with various literary techniques: ambiguity, double entendre, or metaphor. Like the book "The Work of Nature and Identity for Man," in which the author seeks to prove the opposite. Or the older book "The Logical Foundations of Induction," in which the author seeks to prove that induction has no logical foundations.

The title of today's talk is also of this third type. Meaning that our cultural specificities means we have no cultural specificities.

Second preliminary:

In the fields we discuss, it is difficult to prove anything. Prove in the sense that your interlocutor is persuaded and, despite not having accepted it from the outset, hears your proof, raises their hands, and says: I accept. In a simple division, our audience is of three types:

First. Someone who is more or less a supporter of mine.

Second. Someone who is more or less an opponent of mine.

Third. Someone who stands between these two.

The assumption is that in such scholarly exchanges, for instance a lecture or a book, we are dealing with the third group. With a group that has not sworn an oath of agreement or disagreement with anyone and has an aptitude for engaging with arguments. And even if they have thought contrary to the book or lecture, they might open a space for reconsideration.

Third preliminary:

Some may, based on an inclination towards freedom, equality, and human rights zeal or religious zeal, and based on consequences and results, not accept an argument. For example, they might say: These discussions lead to specific results, and since we do not accept those results, we naturally will not submit to the reasoning.

But in response, I point to two things. First, when we say someone's words lead to these negative results, we must reflect and see whether they truly lead to such results or whether it is merely a claim.

Second, suppose it leads to negative consequences; that does not prove the speaker's reasoning is flawed. For instance, suppose I tell you that in the event of an earthquake, this house, with this engineering, will collapse, and the other party responds that if an earthquake comes, ten people might be killed! From the badness of ten people being killed, it does not follow that the house is built according to engineering principles. Of course, the consequence is an undesirable consequence, and we are worried about it. But your fear of the practical outcome does not prove the reasoning is flawed.

Many intellectual currents (such as feminists) think this way: for example, if it is proven that humans have an essence or a nature, legal changes in relations between men and women become difficult or impossible. If men say that their violence or inclinations are innate, that means nothing can be done about it, and perhaps nothing should be done about it.

So, because of these effects and consequences, they do not accept such a thing. And they say that the human being is like a blank slate. It depends on institutions, society, and politics how the slate is written, and however it is written, that is how it turns out. If they write that they are oppressors, bullies, harmful to women, and arrogant, they become that way. And if they write differently on the blank slate, they turn out differently. But this is not the case:

What mostly causes some to treat essentialism like an insult or a curse, more than the weakness of the foundations for proving an essence for humans, is the worry that if we accept an essence for humans, then we must accept many undesirable things. And I disagree with both:

Understanding that we inherently have these flaws does not mean that there is therefore no problem and we go ahead and do them, saying it is not my fault, go grab God, evolution, nature, etc., by the collar and hold the source accountable. This is a point that can be doubted.

One can ask whether this is really the case or if the opposite is true. That is, when an action is said to be natural, we are more provoked to fight against it. Being natural does not sanction something for us; its badness is what matters. Of course, it is true that if a bad thing is natural, curing it demands more energy from us.

If I want to summarize, the history of civilization is the history of the struggle against the natural aspects of humans. A major part of what we do—for example, to be present in this very gathering—like grooming, cleanliness, and things of this sort, is distancing ourselves from our nature. Our nature is not this disciplined, humble, and so on. I think it is a historical masterpiece that culture and civilization have been able to take beings whose background is in the jungles and build such magnificent gatherings, which seems a matter of pride.

The Main Subject:

My point is that we do not have many cultural specificities, and if we do, they are not very specific, and we share them with many others. Furthermore, culture, which is usually used as a variable to explain other things, is itself questionable. In other words, culture is not an original, foundational thing with which to explain many other things. On the contrary, it is itself parasitic and secondary, growing on the branch of other matters, and it is other things that are important. Therefore, culture is something that deserves to be explained, not something with which to explain other things. This is my main claim, which I will set out to strengthen.

I think we have all heard that in many discussions, a causal role is considered for their culture. In the simple sense that the question is asked: why do these people in such-and-such country or tribe behave this way? And we answer: because their culture is like this. Or, for example, a film called Bride of Fire, which examined the issue of honor killings in the south of the country. In this film, someone was also asked: why do they do this? And that person's answer was: they have their own logic. Many of the things that happen in this world, when we set out to understand them, our talk is: their culture is different from ours.

For instance, a group of Iranians might travel to the beaches of France, observe the state of dress, and ask why the French have opted for such minimal clothing. The answer given is that it is due to different cultures. It is as if culture causes this and is itself not caused by anything else. But many of us do not ask what this culture is that does all these things: What is culture? Where did it come from? Where does its power lie? These questions are usually not asked, and we are satisfied.

Can we question culture itself? Did culture exist from the beginning, or was it also brought into being by something?

To answer this question, we must return to the question of how culture comes into being. Part of what I am saying bears similarities to the views of thinkers in this field, but it is not entirely identical.

When humans were left to their own devices in nature, the first thing they did was to meet their basic needs, and it is clear that the fulfillment of these basic needs is constrained by place. That is, where a human lives and what is available to them. But this is something animals share with humans.

Humans go one step further than animals. Humans also rise to the level of agency and initiative. They do not just sit and wait for something to fall into their trap; they get up and make bows and arrows and plows. Things that help them extract more resources from nature.

But here is a very important point: in the wake of tools, soft tools also emerge. Let me give an example: for instance, humans build a spinning wheel and make fabric for pleasure. Or they build a plow and develop agriculture. But they immediately feel the need for something else. For example, who should wear the fabric? In what proportion? How much for each person? The distribution of this pleasure requires software. Organizing how it is distributed among people. For instance, should only women wear it, or men too? How much should they wear, and so on.

This is no longer of the same kind as the bow and arrow. We call these tools civilizational or cultural tools. It seems that hard tools immediately require soft tools as well. And both of these occur within the constraints of nature. For example, when an Eskimo builds a house, they build it from ice, and when they want to eat, they must hunt a bear. What is forbidden and what is permissible, and how many bears can be hunted, corresponds to this. The mode of distribution is connected to reality. The early forms of art, the early forms of religions, and so on, are like this. For instance, we should expect an Eskimo to draw a seal and not a giraffe.

So, when I am confined to a specific environment, both my access to resources is limited by place, and the software we call culture is limited by place. For example, in the case of the Eskimos, it is said that hunting female bears during mating season is forbidden. Both in a ritual sense and in a legal sense. And it can even carry penalties. From here, something called cultural specificities and cultural differences emerges.

If you go to the boat-dwellers of Saigon or the Arab nomads, you feel that the appearances differ. For instance, in one place houses are made of reed mats and straw, and in another of mudbrick and stone. And then, based on this and in connection with this, what is permissible and forbidden is determined. Of course, the claim that one can demonstrate that all values, customs, art, and superstitious beliefs correspond exactly to the living environment is a grand claim. The reason is that we also have creativity, artistic creation, imitation, and chance.

Over time, both civilizational tools and cultural tools expand. And the more civilizational tools we have, the more cultural tools we have. For example, we invent the bow and arrow, and subsequently, we also hang a bead around our necks so that our prey, in addition to being struck by our arrow, might also be struck by an unseen arrow. Or if we build spears and fences to protect our resources, we also create something called a taboo: for instance, we say these things are such that if you touch them, you will die, and so on. Or, for example, we say that an innocent head may go up to the gallows but does not go up on the gallows. Meaning, you who have killed another, do not imagine that someone else will be executed in your place; they will eventually find you and kill you.

Degrees of art, morality, and ritual all follow these software programs, and all of these are in a predicament of place. Regarding hardware, it is quite clear, but regarding software, it is not. The important point is that these are connected to one another. If you built something for plowing, alongside it there is also a thanksgiving dance. If you built a dam and a stream, something called a rain prayer also comes into being. If you had a war and built a weapon, there is also a tribal shaman to recite an incantation.

The Richness of Culture:

When in societies, both of these tools expand and advance, in the software section you encounter a kind of increasing density. Previously, there might have been many limitations, but day by day you hunt more animals. You do more farming, and so on. Each of these hardware items demands its own software. (Who should use it? To what extent? To what extent should men and women each use it? Should the tribal chief, the warriors, and others use it equally? One must think of an equivalent for these, and likewise many other things that lie on the more distant periphery of these matters.) And this software is dense. (In the sense that for a wedding, for war, and for food, and for each of these, you must produce specific software.)

Day by day, for humanity's use of nature and to wrest the pleasures we consider our share from the harsh and miserly clutches of nature, we need other things for the distribution, maintenance, and reinforcement of these tools. These accumulate and become dense. This we call the richness of culture.

What is meant by the richness of culture is this: what ceremonies they have for weddings, funerals, and so on. What they do before a war. How their clothes are. Their pendants differ for every task, and each of these has subtle meanings.

Civilization is Culture-Destroying:

But cultural richness is not abundant in our world. Which of you has heard of cultural richness in Washington or Paris? Usually, the richness of culture is a term used in reference to the jungle dwellers of the Amazon or some tribe.

In the world we speak of as having rich cultures, such as India, China, Africa, South America, and the Middle East, do you not think that these share a vein of kinship with one another? These rich cultures, by clear standards, are undeveloped. That is, welfare and education are scarce in them.

Let us look at the matter from another perspective: suppose you go to Turkey, Canada, France, or Dubai. You feel that long-standing cultural diversities have been abolished. At a Japanese party, what remains of their culture is not a samurai drawing a sword and committing harakiri. From the past, only a kimono and a specific table arrangement remain. Or in Dubai, they only hold a camel race or wear a keffiyeh around their neck. In Ireland, we might see a multi-pipe wind instrument, and these are all peripheral matters. We are more expectant of seeing similar behaviors, and indeed we do see them. And that is why the affairs of this world keep turning. In Japan, you do not see someone bring out a book and say, 'My fifth great-grandfather said that whoever behaves in such a way must be thrown out of the room!'

We are certain that whatever we see in New York and Washington, we will also see in Japan. At most, there is a different flavor in the food, different clothing, and different hospitality. And these are merely appearances. I use this expression and say (though some may not like it): civilization is culture-devouring.

We must accept this as a fact: the more we move into societies that are more industrialized, we can see that cultural richness has evaporated and vanished into thin air. We are faced with a set of civilizational tools, and there is no news of that cultural richness. For this reason, we do not speak of the cultural richness of Switzerland unless history is the subject of discussion.

The next point of discussion is: by what mechanism has this occurred?

If you give me no address about a country and only give me two facts, I will tell you what we should expect when crossing the street in that country. Should we expect that when a car sees a pedestrian, it will swerve, stick its head out, hurl a couple of insults, honk its horn, and unleash everything but the kitchen sink, or that from a distance, upon seeing a pedestrian, it will brake and yield? That one will toss their banana peel out of the car in a specific, varied manner, or flick their cigarette with a particular number of spins, or not do such things? These two facts are:

One. The average level of public welfare, accounting for equitable distribution

Two. The average level of public literacy

These two factors devour cultural richness. The mass of cultural specificities, which are sometimes spoken of with pride (though some of them are indeed so, like the artistic parts that can inspire others, and to be fair, they do), are behaviors accompanied by violence, prejudice, and restrictions for others, and are heading toward decay.

In a purely imaginary conception (like Descartes, who said give me extension and motion, and I will build the world for you), if you give me education and welfare, I will give you the cultivated, human-rights-respecting human being, purged of violence.

The Level of Culture and the Richness of Culture:

But what is the mechanism of this matter? That is, how do welfare and education act to destroy the depth and richness of culture? And after that, an important question: Does this mean that industrialized and advanced countries have no culture? That is, are they uncultured?

To answer, we must first distinguish between two interpretations: the level of culture and the richness of culture, and that the level of culture is the destroyer of the richness of culture.

What is the level of culture? When we say a certain person has a high level of culture or is cultivated, what does it mean?

A cultivated person possesses these three components:

One. A scientific-rational-empirical view of the world: To explain what is happening in the universe (floods, earthquakes, etc.), they do not resort to benevolent and malevolent spirits and try to explain matters with the tools that science provides them.

Two. Adherence to the law: To regulate relations, they use something called law. Something common to industrial societies that has the potential to prevent very serious differences.

Three. Social ethics: A relatively tolerant demeanor, with a slight smile, and so on. Of course, no one in this world is seeking to sacrifice themselves for someone else. Social ethics means trying to have good relations with everyone. Whereas in the literature of societies possessing cultural richness, when they see a stranger, like in old Persian TV series, they use the term 'stranger': Where are you from, stranger! What are you saying, stranger!

That is, the first attribute of a person is not their humanity. Whereas in advanced societies, it is the opposite: assuming they are human, they are treated the same as others. At least in the realm of appearances.

But in societies possessing cultural richness, this is not the case:

One. It explains the world through certain prejudices, illusions, and fantasies.

Two. Law holds no importance for them. They accept things that the elders of the tribe said in the past, which may not even be very systematic, and act upon them.

Three. In the ethics of sociability, they seek identity—an identity that, if not defined in enmity, is at least defined and presented in serious difference from others: I am that which he is not. (Like the simple expression, "I'm a kid from such-and-such a place.")

As the level of culture rises, it shaves off the richness of culture and casts it to the ground. That is why human beings in industrial societies are more alike. And human beings in backward or developing societies have serious differences.

But through what mechanism does the level of culture shave off cultural richness?

One. At the beginning of my talk, I said that we differ from other animals and emerge as toolmakers—both soft tools and hard tools. This toolmaking is the work of reason, and reason grows. When reason grows, it builds tools that [erode] the particularistic elements, illusions, and sanctities that arise environmentally. When a person thinks and advances their hardware and software with a scientific-empirical, testable order—and they need software for that, but this software is no longer that [old] software. The software of the past has a ruling for every single, isolated issue in history and lacks the power of classification. It lacks the power that, if I see one problem, I can behave the same way toward dozens of other similar instances.

In cultural richness, you have to leaf through a five-hundred-page or five-hundred-thousand-page book, or go to the tribe's shaman to resolve your need.

For example, if you want to fight mice or cockroaches, or a tribe upstream or downstream, they have a separate prayer and a separate talisman for each, and they are proud of this richness. Whereas, on the other side, it is said that you can look, test, and a tool is placed at your disposal, and there is no need for a figure like the shaman.

And this method is not a dense, massive compound of illusions, prejudices, and inheritances; it has a clear, calculable logic that can be learned and used. Therefore, the ground for such concentrations and intensities becomes much less available.

Two. What technology does for us is that time devours space. And when time devours space, cultural differences also become very diluted and fade, moving from the foundations, pillars, and floor of society into museums. In what way?

At the beginning of my talk, I said that you are condemned to the constraint of place. That is, you cannot hunt polar bears in Arabia, you cannot use an icebox, and the software you use is based on that same principle.

For example, someone who bends down in the street and picks up bread—why does this happen? Because wheat has been our most important food, and because it held such importance for the foot, this software seeped from its corner: if a piece of bread falls in a corner, it is a sin; you must pick up the bread, either eat it, or at least, because it has sanctity, put it somewhere that no one steps on it. So, software is constrained by the environment. It is entirely possible that in the desert, this sanctity shifts toward water.

When the discussion is that time devours space, it means that when you become able to bring the things you want from other places, you are no longer in the constraint of place, and because you are no longer in the constraint of place, you no longer have those cultural specificities either.

Now, Eskimos easily bring things from two thousand kilometers away, because they pick them up and bring them. They also bring coal-burning stoves, build sheds, and live in them. We can assume that those cultural specificities, which gradually created poetry, lyricism, religion, etc., for them, are fading.

Today, a ship brings you things regardless of whether they exist in your society and climate or not; in Tehran, you can build a wooden house, a glass house, or a stone house, because you have the technological means. Thus, time has defeated space, meaning that because you move at great speed, space cannot hold you in its grip.

When you used specific hardware, you used software that was more or less connected to it. But now, when your hardware arrives in bulk from wherever in the world you wish, it is clear that those software lose their force and power.

Let us summarize:

What is sacred is the level of culture, not cultural richness. If we envision a mission for modern humans, that mission is not to preserve this or that subculture.

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Audio of Morteza Mardiha's lecture titled "Our Cultural Specificities"

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Lecture by Morteza Mardiha at UCLA titled "Our Cultural Specificities," November 2012

Transcription of the lecture: Ali Ahmadi

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