Us and Them: Understanding Cultural Identity
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Deborah Clark Vance, Us and Them: Understanding Cultural Identity, bahai-library.com.
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Us and Them:

Understanding Cultural Identity

Deborah Clark Vance

2002-08

What is Culture?
We
behave as though cultures are systems of cognitively shared
uniformity, that individuals moving in them think and behave in
predictable ways: African-Americans, Hispanics, Anglos, Arabs, even
nationalities—Italians, Canadians(?) Japanese. If you examine
any of these cultural systems, you’ll probably find tendencies,
similarities, practices, that you can contrast with each other. For
example a Japanese tendency to prefer the group over the individual;
the USAmerican to profess the opposite.

Factors
in the world are percolating to change all this – new ways of
being are suggested via mass broadcasting; democratic expectations
are rising with the demise of totalitarian states. In short,
Bahá’u’lláh’s principles are taking
root throughout the world, as an old order of national and clerical
authority loses its grip.

Origins
of Culture – a Bahá’í Perspective

“The seminal force in the civilizing of human nature has been
the influence of the succession of these Manifestations of the
Divine that extends back to the dawn of recorded history”
(Universal House of Justice, April 2002 letter).

“Life on earth is millions of years old. Man has evolved from
an embryonic state toward maturity.” (Abdu’l-Bahá,
Some Answered Questions).

“Among the bounties of God is revelation. Hence revelation is
progressive and continuous. It never ceases.” (Bahá’u’lláh,
Teachings on Spiritual Reality, pp 166).

If
God has always provided guidance through His Messengers, and if human
beings have always existed on the planet, then countless
Manifestations have come and gone, carrying civilization forward
during prehistory as well, from the discovery of fire, to that of
agriculture, to the establishment of the family unit, and every other
human achievement.

“Civilization
and cultures arise, built upon religious teachings of a new
Manifestation coming into contact with people who are transformed by
the Word of God, as the teachings affect their lives and they obtain
a new measure of truth. When that unifying force, the penetrating
influence of the word of God, taketh effect, the difference of
customs, manners, habits, ideas, opinions and dispositions embellish
the world of humanity. This diversity, this difference, is like the
naturally created dissimilarity and variety of the limbs and organs
of the human body, for each one contributeth to the beauty,
efficiency and perfection of the whole” (Abdu’l-Bahá
SAB 290-291).

Causes
of Division

What
we know and understand may all be traced back to divine teachings. In
revealing religion, the Manifestations of God have stressed spiritual
teachings, agreeing with each other (Selections from the Writings of
Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 52-53). “Each of the divine
religions embodies two kinds of ordinances. The first is those which
concern spiritual susceptibilities…the second… is those
which relate to the material affairs of humankind.” (Teachings
of spiritual reality, pp 161-2).

Inasmuch
as the teachings of the Manifestations have the power to transform
human nature, cannot one assume that new cultures are born out of
these transformations? “The birth of family life, development
into the achievement of tribal solidarity...constitution of the city
states…sovereign nations” (Selections from the
Writings of 'Abdu’l-Baha [SWAB], p. 43). As society
organized itself into families, tribes, and nations, it has made
distinctions as to ethnicity, race, culture, nationality and
religion. Thus one type of difference is material and the other is
spiritual.

“Differences
are of two kinds. One is the cause of annihilation and is like the
antipathy existing among warring nations and conflicting tribes who
seek each other’s destruction, uprooting one another’s
families, depriving one another of rest and comfort and unleashing
carnage” (SWAB 290).

Children
learn to categorize by grouping together things that are alike and
sorting out things that are not alike. Bahá’u’lláh
says that humankind is reaching the stage of maturity. People used to
be incapable of grasping certain truths. Jesus said “I have yet
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit,
when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all
truth” (John 16:12-13). Thus humankind may have made
distinctions among the in-group and the outgroups, because humans may
have been incapable of understanding the concept of human oneness
just as The notion that “I and my traditional enemy are the
same” may have been beyond human understanding.

The
Manifestations in every age have been rejected: The motives for past
rejections are our heritage. “Whatever in days gone by hath
been the cause of the denial and opposition of those people hath now
led to the perversity of the people of this age” (Bahá’u’lláh,
Kitab-i-Iqan) Opposition to God’s Messengers chronicled in the
Iqán was not perpetrated merely by individuals, but by entire
groups who denied, repudiated, vehemently opposed, contended, envied,
and ignored the truth out of waywardness, idle fancy, pride,
arrogance, petty mindedness and tyranny.

The
only distinction that Manifestations seem to make among people is
that of the believers and the heedless. Mohammad in the Koran tells
the believers to eschew polytheists who are unclean. History shows
that much effort has been exerted to maintain the hegemonic power of
clergy, gathering force from tribes and nations to participate in the
name of the religions of their fathers, though Bahá’u’lláh
laments in the Iqán how people consistently reject
Manifestations whose sole purpose was to exhort them to believe in
God. “The essential reality of the religions is one and their
seeming variance and plurality is adherence to forms and imitations
which have arisen” (PUP, p. 99). History viewed thus provides
one explanation for the origins of some of the prejudices that the
House of Justice says “once seemed inherent in the nature of
the human species, barriers that long divided the family of man into
a Babel of incoherent identities of cultural, ethnic or national
origin” (Letter April 2002).

Cultural
Identity

Seen
through the lens of Bahá’í teachings, one God
made us all, and we all share a spiritual nature. This is where we
begin to connect with each other. Yet we’ve each grown up in
language and cultural systems among others who seem to share
assumptions and expectations. Manifestations have revealed spiritual
and material laws. Their interplay has blended in peoples’
minds and developed similar assumptions as children learn their
parents’ assumptions. “If you’re like us, you’ll
behave this way.” We’ve internalized these assumptions so
that they seem “natural” to us. We never discuss them,
they just are. And usually they lie dormant unless countered or
challenged by someone else

[Examples?]

[pioneer
stories]

The
Italian language distinguishes between knowledge (sapienza –
facts, unchanging from day to day) and knowing (conoscenza –
changes in different contexts). Similarly, cognitive psychologists
say that the brain processes explicit knowledge (information acquired
during skill learning) and implicit, non-declarative knowledge, such
as habits to which we have no conscious access; evolutionarily older,
and more resistant to disruptions by diseases and disorder (e.g.,
amnesia). There’s less individual variation in implicit
behaviors. “People share certain understanding because they’ve
learned to interact successfully” (Borofsky, 345).

These
dimensions of knowing coincide, perhaps, with the material and
spiritual natures of humans and the material and spiritual teachings
of the Manifestations. How does the knowing, the spiritual learning,
become knowledge, (habitual, part of “human nature”?)
“The fundamental principles of the Prophets are correct and
true, the imitations and superstitions which have crept in are at
wide variance with the original precepts and commands”
(Teachings on Spiritual Reality, pp 161-2).

What
is Prejudice?

Abdu’l-Bahá
says, “all religious, racial, patriotic and political prejudice
must be abandoned, for these are the destroyers of the real
foundation of humanity.” (Promulgation of Universal Peace, p.
299) and “the prejudices and bigotries which exist today among
the religions are not justifiable , inasmuch as they are opposed to
reality;” and “racial assumption and distinction are
nothing but superstition. (p. 299) Further, “Consider the
prejudice of patriotism. This is one globe, one land, one country.
God did not divide it into national boundaries. He created all the
continents without national divisions. Why should we make such
division ourselves? These are but imaginary lines and boundaries”
(PUP p. 299). “By this division and separation into groups and
branches of mankind, prejudice is engendered which becomes a fruitful
source of war and strife (PUP p. 316). “Each nation has clung
to its own imitations, and because these are at variance, warfare,
bloodshed and destruction of the foundation of humanity have resulted
(PUP p. 232) “Man has laid the foundation of prejudice, hatred,
and discord with his fellowman by considering nationalities separate
in importance and races different in rights and privileges”
(PUP p. 232).

In
seeking the causes of intergroup prejudices, communication theory
often focuses on identity formation and how cultural identities can
obstruct understanding. Intergroup prejudices can be counted among
the contemporary perversities that Bahá’u’lláh
condemns. Culture and language are seen as central to identity
formation, providing standpoints from which individuals perceive the
world: Individuals are born into cultural worlds and form their sense
of self and their worldviews from a particular perspective, filtered
through a particular language. The divisions established among human
beings, whether national, racial, religious or cultural, are man-made
divisions, yet they are so fundamental that most individuals derive a
sense of identity from one or several of these groups. It can be
argued that what is perverse about people today derives from these
divisions, for opposition to the past Manifestations was led by
clergy who held the reigns of power, who relied on

continued
support from families and tribes. The literature bulges with research
about how, by establishing the we-they boundaries, groups reinforce
themselves.

Cultural
Unity

“Gather
ye together and for the sake of God resolve to root out whatever is
the source of contention amongst you.” (World Order of
Bahá’u’lláh, [WAB] p. 17) Seeing that these
divisions are the root of a problem, though, is not powerful enough
to wish them away. There are multiple languages, multiple cultures,
multiple religions and perspectives on the planet. Children learn the
teachings of their families’ religions, of their nation’s
schools. Traditions, manners, virtues come with cultural and
religious undertones. In short, diversity exists and it does so
within a social and political hierarchy and as such, makes membership
in one or another group advantageous. Diversity in and of itself
should provide no problem.

The statement can be heard among Bahá’ís, “There
is only one Bahá’í Faith.” While Bahá’ís
believe this to be true, it is a mindset that overlooks the tenet of
unity in diversity, that denies that individuals have different
perspectives based on history and culture and sex. A recent example
that I observed: We had a funeral of a longtime American Bahá’í
whose Christian family opposed her participation in the Faith when
she was a young woman. A family member asked the LSA to plan the
memorial service and asked that Persian chanting not be included so
as not to put off family members. The Persians in the community were
offended and accused the LSA of being cowardly, as though they were
denying their faith. They insisted that Bahá’u’lláh’s
prayers are in Farsí and should always be included.

Discussion

A.
Problem:

1. Power differences exist among groups. In most segments of society,
whites dominate, but as Kweisi Mfume recently reminded the NAACP,
blacks can be racist too, when they have power.

B.
Analysis:

1. Bahá’u’lláh says we’ve inherited
bad traits of the past.

2. Humanity past started the laying down of boundaries, the making of
distinctions whereas Manifestations have distinguished between the
Godly and the ungodly

C.
Solution:

1.
Awareness – What are your underlying assumptions?

a.
how do you perceive time, space, smell, values?

b.
how do others perceive you?

c.
How do you know?

2. Gurevitch (1989) says to understand that you don’t
understand. But you can empathize

3.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says to travel.

a.
What is the wisdom of pioneering?

b. One is that you’re forced to be in another culture and may
learn to distinguish

II..
What do you expect?

A.
Contrast your expectations at Bahá’í events with
those outside and you can see how expectations develop.

1. think about conferences, summer schools, world congress,
convention, feast, firesides.

2. Meetings start with prayers and often end with “a closing
prayer.”

3. Prayers are never made up, but from Bahá’u’lláh
and Abdu’l-Bahá

4.
Meetings aren’t punctual[?]

REFERENCES

‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
Promulgation of Universal Peace

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selected Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Bahá’u’lláh,
Kitab-i-Iqan

Bahá’u’lláh,
Teachings on Spiritual Reality, pp 161-2).

Borofsky, R. (Ed.)
(1994). Assessing cultural anthropology. New York:
McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Gurevitch, Z. D.
(1989). The power of not understanding: The meeting of conflicting
identities. The Journal of applied Behavioral Science 25 (2)
161-173.

Shoghi Effendi, World
Order of Bahá’u’lláh

Universal House of
Justice, April 2002 letter.

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-- Us and Them: Understanding Cultural Identity (Used by permission of the curator)