Re: my last post (Mad Men, the psychological décor): of course, the difference between today and 1960 is undoubtedly more than drugs and the 'psychological model' of James Bond. For example, there's what we might call the Om factor. Yoga and the east had been hovering around the culture pretty much from the beginning of the 20th century; and an affinity for eastern philosophy has some European intellectual roots that extend back at least into the 18th century. But the yoga fad that cycled through here in the last two decades is a direct consequence of the late 60s and early 70s seeding of eastern practice. Undoubtedly, we could assign it under the rubric of 'drugs', if we like to get wifto about symbols, since the psychedelic influx of the 60s ended in a post-apocalyptic antidote of yoga, tai chi and so forth. Tim Leary's sidekick, Richard Alpert / Ram Dass, hit the pure note of psychedelic recovery with his Be Here Now, still on the store shelves, and probably past the million mark in sales, at this point.
            And the James Bond 'ideal', as superficial as it is, undoubtedly represents something deeper. In this blog, we have talked about the peculiar systematization, the unique technologization and professionalization that eventuated from the war generation. Those of us who can remember how academe was in 1960 are perhaps as aware of this change as anyone. Sometimes tenure was still used to protect genuinely developmental scholars, men or women who had not yet produced a major work, apart from an indicative thesis, but evinced the intelligence and determinative commitment that marks the true scholar - unlike today, when the massive CV seems to be the chief aim and defining object, and tenure is a bureaucratic bludgeon. This was paralleled by the developments in commerce and industry. But these leave a relatively scant record. A Don Draper was the harbinger of the new ideal, a kind of military reticence, but brought into the pseudo-social spheres of the modern corporate environment, combined with a penetration and intelligence that moves directly to the goal. But even after the war, we hear of desk jockeys in some of the more freewheeling businesses dancing on their desks or otherwise running amok, not at the office Christmas party, but on any given day, to express success or failure, or simply to vent.

            But, of course, this is only nominally what my previous post was about. The change may be subtle, but it is very real. The problem with the mass media is, of course, first of all, that it is 'mass', but, second of all, that to reach a mass audience, one must mirror the mass consciousness. And, even perhaps in revolutionary times, the masses always want to believe that their own immediate worldview is universal, that whatever else may change or be changed in history, that remains constant. The individual who buys into the contemporary mass mind assumes that the only real differences are external, and that they could see themselves, just as they are, in any individual from their own or another culture at any period in history.

            For years now, I have automatically assumed that I read Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture as a scholastic exercise. But when I focus on it, I realize that my mother handed it to me out of the stream of used books that flowed through our house and barn because of our involvement in the local volunteer library. And she was aware of it because of her undergraduate and graduate work in social anthropology. At the same time, I still see the title at used book sales. Speaking of symbols, the book does not try to present a compendium or encyclopedic register of cultural differences. If I remember correctly, it presents three or four different cultures. But these are obviously intended as markers for some of the extremes encountered by anthropologists in their studies of culture. The book is written for a popular audience. And the intent is clearly to show that cultures, like individuals, can manifest radical psychological differences. One of the cultures involves a profile of clinical paranoia: a substantial range of acceptable behaviors in that culture would be certifiable in ours. Another involves a kind of extravagant extroversion, but a culture in which war games have evolved into the question of who can create and destroy more goods, the so-called potlatch culture. What Benedict is doing is simply showing that cultures can be radically different, a basic lesson that we should be inculcating in elementary school, and not as the validation of our own culture as some unique epitome. We speak of cultural relativism, but we simultaneously depreciate the real differences between cultures by our assumptions of the homogeneity or sameness, not only of the basic human personality, but also of the basic human worldview.
            The sameness and differences of humanity are among the most potent and necessary issues of education.
            But we need to understand that what is true cross-culturally is also true of history, and true of our own history as a culture. If I were to characterize the basic problem of our present intellectual culture in a single phrase, it would be 'lack of history'.

            I love the 'Jane Austen movies' in which the lovers, at the given moment, not only kiss, but instantly begin deep tongue kissing, as if they had been practicing for years. What is being represented, supposedly, is a culture in which kissing is tantamount to engagement, a promise of marriage - a culture in which a broken engagement is considered the ruin of the woman and a blot on the man. And I myself can remember a time, in our own culture, when tongue kissing was considered lascivious and promiscuous behavior, even, ostensibly, in the view of some married couples.
            But mass media will be mass media.

            History is not a dead hand. The reason we study history is because it is alive and present. We might read Plato or Aristotle, not in some recondite scholarly context, but simply in a reasonable translation, and suddenly realize that our present interpretation of them is radically removed from their original context. That is, we might have a direct insight into their original context. And, if they have real validity for us, this is altogether likely. Scholarship, not just today, but throughout history, has tended to impose a contemporary worldview on historical figures, documents and artifacts. And the more 'sophisticated' the scholarship, the more likely that the contemporary worldview has not only 'crept into' the interpretations, but absolutely dominates them. The very fact that we rarely read a textbook published more than two decades ago, in our formal academic studies, is a sure sign of a problem. Granted that the overbearing emphasis on 'education' - at least in terms of diplomas - has led to a proliferation of 'research', and, in many cases, of the discovery of 'fact' that is important if not imperative in the modern interpretation of historical situations, the basic truth remains that the expression of that research in modern texts has become increasingly tainted by the modern worldview, precisely because of the focus on technique and profession and the minute fact, as opposed to the general understanding of significance that comes out of a basic, unobstructed interpretation of the original material to which the modern fact and interpretation are added.

            One of the transitional elements that came with the 60s and 70s, in terms of education, was the cry of 'relevance'. What is the relevance, for example, of Latin? So, out it goes. Mass education is mass culture. Relevance is vocational. Latin is making something of a comeback, perhaps out of sheer perversity. But in the interim, the students of the classics were primarily looking for a career in academe, a career marked, not by the peculiarly relevant uses of the classics as a study of cultural sameness and difference in terms of history, but as a field for recondite researches that might qualify as 'new' within the churned over scholarship of centuries.
            Mass education is mass culture. Teaching is strictly vocational. We have no time to study how cultures change. So we have no ability to notice how our own culture has changed in our lifetimes. In short, we have no mirror by which to see ourselves. And our pseudo-philosophies and critical maunderings, dressed up in ever more sophisticated, baroque or esoteric language, are the sure sign that we have lost the least understanding of ourselves and our significance.