Recollection of Culture

A recollection of my culture

(By: Valred Olsim)

When I was in high school, we were often grouped according to the language we spoke in preparation for cultural presentations. Those events left me a lasting impression that language, culture, and ethnicity are parts of the same concept. Perhaps, I was not matured enough to bother myself in knowing their difference, even though  I can proudly identify myself as a “full blooded Igorot” and speak Kankana-ey and Baguio-Benguet Ilokano fluently aside from English and Filipino. It is, however, in my college years that I contemplated about culture and discovered that culture is not merely language, or those ethnic dances and tribal art, but a very “complex whole encompassing almost all human activities and ideas that is shared by members of a society”. Thus, the way of life of a society in a period of time is a defining factor in studying individual cultures, including my own.

In hindsight, I belong to the human society.  Throughout its history, humans have fashioned universal ways and concepts which are closely linked to their existence. For instance, the concept of working to eat, regardless of how it is done, received great regard from different societies. Trade and industries sprung from this need, and knowledge became a pre-requisite to working in such production-based societies.  As a child, I was conditioned to stay in a learning environment in preparation for a degree and ultimately to work in the professional society. Although I was not influenced by the ‘fad’ of taking-up nursing after high school, it is my belief that the whole educational system was a culture in itself which is very important to the life of humans. Clearly, that alone is an indication that society promotes a culture that is basic towards human sustenance – work.

As a member of the human society, it was also a natural tendency for me to “communicate”. I was lucky to know a few dialects together with the national language, and although there were complicated debates on whether ‘culture created language’ or the other way around, which is; ‘language created culture’, I am inclined to believe both, at least to some extent. In my opinion, the main human culture is to communicate, and language is only a tool, thus, culture may have created language. However, I also believe that language may create culture in a way that language can create a subculture. For instance, the ‘Jejemon culture’ in today’s generation sprouted from the radical creativity of today’s youth in ‘text messaging’. Perhaps, the message is the medium, thus, language may have been redefined by the wave of technical gadgets and the abundance and younger generation’s celebration or reaction to everything that is “new”. Back in my years for instance, as a teenager, we played heavy metal rock as a way to express ourselves and consequently as a way to communicate. Our music preference which contains rebellious language guided us to wearing dark clothes and tattered pants, having ear-piercings and long hair. We also engaged ourselves into excessive drinking, and other compromising activities – a subculture which must be enjoyed by the so called “rockers”. Hence, language may create culture, although language remains to be the basic vehicle of cultural life including various belief systems.

I was born and raised in La Trinidad, Benguet. The town is originally an agricultural town but was dramatically urbanized due to the inviting development of Baguio City, its neighboring town which is a center for various trades in the Cordillera region. The development encouraged migration from its neighboring municipalities and provinces – from the Kankana-eys and Bontoks from Mt. Province to Ilocanos and Tagalogs from the lowlands. This predicament turned La Trinidad into a multi-cultural society – each migrating groups bringing, to some extent, their ideas, belief systems and other ‘ways of life’. As a child, I am exposed to these different cultures, in fact my parents are not originally from here; my father came from Bauko, Mt. Province and Irisan, Baguio City, and my mother, from Bontoc and Sabangan, Mt. Province, that is why I recognize the familiar celebration requiring butchering of pigs and inviting the community to partake in it, or those ethnic dances from those different cultural origins. However, even these old traditions were modernized and influenced by different cultures. Celebrations in a typical family in La Trinidad serve western foods, and adopt the cooking of different provinces, aside from the traditional “a-nger”. Another manifestation for example is when the traditional dances were modernized or made into a ‘modern-traditional’ hybrid. There is much influence and inter-marriage of cultures that I can’t seem to bother if what I witness is a main culture or not. The good thing about a multicultural society, however, is that diversity and variety which, for me, prevents boredom and monotony. We simply have the taste of all worlds. Aside from these apparent cultural influences, another influencing factor to my tendencies, or rather, to my belief system is religion.

Christianity was ultimately embraced by the Philippines in its centuries of struggle against the Spanish colonizers, albeit, it took time penetrating the strapping mountains of the Cordillera region. Nevertheless, I was raised by my parents in a Christian family home – going to mass every Sundays, attending Sunday schools, and the adherence to a Christian-guided concept of morality. However, there was a nagging self in me that asks ‘why?’ and ‘what?’ and ‘how come?’ - I am, fortunately, a natural skeptic. Thus, aside from religion, I embraced philosophy as a way of how I study and evaluate my life, my existence and almost everything that I can grasp in this world. I was first fascinated with existentialism before I took metaphysics seriously. Is it possible that one can deviate from a commonly accepted faith and embrace a self-acquired belief system? I am not sure. If the premise of culture is something that is “acquired by humans as members of a society”, it is also quite noting that the history of humans had echoed tales of conflict, rebellion and opposition as an essential pre-requisite to the rise of another culture, thus, deviation to another belief system can grow to another culture or sub-culture.

My exposure towards a multi-cultural and unstable society often makes me doubt who I am in this world. If a repetitive pattern of action or tendency presents itself into a society, shall I be compelled to abide by it? Should it necessarily arouse general acceptance? I have a strong leaning to believe that my generation did not only openly accept cultures or sub-cultures that were presented to us by our parents, neighborhood or the community, but by simple tools, like say: the television. Television which found special places in the house of every modern family, in a way, became an escape from reality – the immersion to this ‘great moving images formed by little dots of insignificant light’. In its own self, television has become a new religion, albeit, the same traditional need for entertainment by societies. People watch it to be happy, to get through by the day, to relieve them from things that they don’t want to see. However, it also bombarded us with numerous information; of commercials and Ads which have turned us into willing consumers, controlled by the psychology that reality exists on that box-like frame. It controls us and forces us to oblige on a standard; that being beautiful is to look like models, and that we have to try their product to become one, that we have to eat “this” or to do “that” in order to be “in” – it fed us with a rotten culture of vanity which ultimately became a sub-culture that is blindly accepted by a society. I saw this happened in my younger years, unfortunately, it had increased considerably in this time because of the internet and other social-media.

When I was in college, I stumbled upon the concept of “culture industry” while doing a literary research for my prose. This concept introduced me to the idea that while culture is acquired from spontaneous experiences of groups and changes to adapt to their needs, there is also a powerful system that is maintained to manufacture culture for profit, hence the term ‘culture industry’. In my teenage years, I willingly succumbed to these manipulating strategies; I bought bracelets which I do not need because the television said that it is a fashion trend, I listened to pop music because the radio taught the general public that pop music is “in”, I remember buying baggy six-pocket-pants, because almost everyone was wearing it in my time and because, for some reason, a powerful market head decided to introduce and create a “cool fad” which is, ‘wearing baggy pants’. To have thought of using culture to dictate tendencies of people only shows that culture, in its complexity, is very important in the human society

Although sociologists may still maintain that culture should be spontaneous, there are, albeit, few attempts of groups to create a culture that may be suitable for themselves. Parisian art students, for example, vandalized their wall with a quote that reads, ‘Culture is dead, now let us start creating’. Perhaps one reason that prompted them to do such move is the existence of cultures that are not just favorable to the modern generation but also promotes a culture of backwardness. As a law student, we often encounter laws that are oppressive which are based on a bias society. There are laws that lean to a chauvinistic male society, like concubinage in comparison with adultery, or the difference of penalties between sexes. Come to think of it, law students and lawyers also have a sub-culture of their own that only they understand.

Indeed, culture encompasses a complicated entirety that is related to the human way of life. There are uncertainties on the basis of how people regard things as culture or not because its complexity is as intricate as the human tendency itself. Lord Raqlan once defined it as “..rougly anything we do, and monkeys don’t”. Personally, I have given a few glimpse of what I regard as culture and sub-culture according to how I’ve experienced life in my 24 years of living. I have given my doubts on how I can weigh that which is a culture and sub-culture because I also doubt my own perception on how to distinguish them from each other. I have doubts because I believe that my generation was the most affected recipient and victim of the technological explosion which distorted the traditional definition of culture. Mahatma Gandhi theorized that, “..no culture can live if it remains to be exclusive”. He may be right. The society today is different; a neighbor can be a cowboy from Texas, USA or a factory worker in China. Through the internet, television, and mobile gadgets, our societies have closely knitted itself into the human fabric. This predicament displaced the traditional cultures or sub-cultures that were introduced to us by the older generation. As the tools and the mediums change according to the need of humans, cultures have also been transformed, and needless to say, mine was not spared. As a resident of the world, looking at the TV as a window, and talking to foreigners through the internet as neighbors; I am a member of many societies where I can adopt many cultures.

I may be wrong on some of my ideas about culture, but then, I can only deduct that everything which I have embraced according to my own perception of a ‘way of life’ is my culture. I’m not pessimistic about the existence of culture; in fact I highly regard its importance in our society and civilization of humanity. As my existentialist hero, Albert Camus, said, “Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”