Cultural Disorders

While different people have different ideals of health, the idiom of resilience has a built-in, pragmatic connection to reality. It is like health-in-relation-to-challenge. So instead of trying to define or find an ideal of health, I like to look at how to improve resilience--a practical understanding and standard of health.

When trying to learn a new set of concepts, it can be helpful to know what a new idea is NOT. So in talking about resilience, it can be helpful to differentiate resilience or health from disordering. Many of the characteristics of cultures that I talk about fall somewhere along a continuum between one unhealthy extreme and another. Some situations will call for actions that are not always in the center of the continuum. For example, in a culturally and ethnically homogenous country like Japan a few centuries ago, it would be appropriate to have less of a value placed on pluralism and diversity than in the America of today. In essence, then, as situations change, cultural values can change to help people adapt to their changing situations. The flipside, of course, is that we can institutionalize certain values while denying others and allow the culture within our society to fossilize. To the extent that individuals or societies are impressed with static or idealistic values, they will resist change. (An interesting point to return to later would be that every value can be thought of and acted out as a living process or as a static idea and ideal.)

Here's a partial list of cultural disorders:
Internal rigidity/immobility/caste (Hindu India)
Extreme homogeneity and/or xenophobia (early Japan, tribalism in general)
Rejection of diversity/multiplicity of values (almost all traditional societies and cultures)
Inequality of personhood (based on class, gender, race, religion, profession, intelligence, health, etc.)
Lack of interaction with other cultures (perhaps not a problem in the Kalahari, but becomes a problem for Amazonian tribes when the oil companies try to move in–whenever resources are disputed)
Overindulgence (upper classes everywhere, Portugal 14/1500s)
Apathy/fatalism/cynicism (communist bloc, 20th century)
Aggressive expansion (pick your favorite)
Ignorance (due to censorship or lack of educational opportunities)
Diffusion (lack of purpose/meaning due to loss of history or information overload)

What fascinates me is how many people have argued over which values or virtues are best, as if values and virtues are abstractions that have little to do with our actions. So for instance, a strong sense of tradition can easily become internal rigidity or xenophobia when it is allowed to be abstracted and exaggerated. On the other extreme, a valuing "progress" can lead into diffusion when progress is seen mostly in idealistic terms or as a rejection of tradition (1960s America). Further, while there are many influences that fed into the Baby Boomer's radicalism and Gen-Xers subsequent sense of diffusion, regardless of which causes we notice or which people we may want to blame, the cultural and social characteristics remain.

The ways in which societies retain cultural disordering are very similar to the ways in which individuals retain personality disordering. And, interestingly enough, although the ways which groups communicate and make decisions are somewhat different than the ways that individuals makes decisions and choose to act, overcoming cultural disorders can follow pretty much the same path as overcoming personality disorders.