“Well, I guess you’re going to have to explain that.”
“Do you know what a culture is?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure.”
“The word culture is like a chameleon, Julie. It has no color of its own but rather takes color from its setting. It means one thing when you talk about the culture of chimpanzees, another when you talk about the culture of General Motors. It’s valid to say there are only two fundamentally different human cultures. It’s also valid to say there are thousands of human cultures. Instead of trying to explain what culture means when it’s all by itself (which is almost impossible), I’m just going to explain what I mean when I say ‘your culture.’ All right?”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“In fact, I’m going to make it even easier than that. I’m going to give you two rules of thumb by which you can identify the people of your culture. Here’s one of them. You’ll know you’re among the people of your culture if the food is all owned, if it’s all under lock and key.”
“Hmm,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine it being any other way.”
“But of course it once was another way. It was once no more owned than the air or the sunshine are owned. I’m sure you must realize that.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You seem unimpressed, Julie, but putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key—and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy.”
“How is that?” I asked. “Why is it the cornerstone?”
“Because, if the food wasn’t under lock and key, Julie, who would work?”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Wow.”
“If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you’ll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It’s all owned, and if you want some, you’ll have to buy it.”
“I see. So you’re saying these people all belong to one culture.”
“Clearly I’m talking about fundamentals, and nothing is more fundamental than food. I’m sure it’s difficult for you to realize how very bizarre you are in this respect. You think it makes complete sense to have to work for what’s free for the taking to every other creature on earth. You alone lock food away from yourselves and then toil to get it back—and imagine that nothing could possibly make better sense.”
“Yes, it is bizarre if you put it like that. But it isn’t just our culture that has done that. It’s humanity, isn’t it?”
“No, Julie. I know Mother Culture teaches that this is something humanity did, but that’s a lie. It was only you, a single culture, not the whole of humanity. By the time we’re finished, you’ll have no doubt about that at all.”
“Okay.”
“Another rule of thumb you can use to identify the people of your culture is this: They perceive themselves to be members of a race that is fundamentally flawed and inherently doomed to suffering and misery. Because they’re fundamentally flawed, they expect wisdom to be a rare commodity, difficult to acquire. Because they’re inherently doomed, they’re not surprised to be living in the midst of poverty, injustice, and crime, not surprised that their rulers are self-serving and corrupt, not surprised to be rendering the world uninhabitable for themselves. They may be indignant about these things, but they’re not surprised by them, because this is how they expect things to be. This makes as
much sense to them as having their food under lock and key.”
“Do you mind if I play devil’s advocate for a minute?”
“Not at all.”
“There’s a teacher at school who’s always giving us pitying looks because he’s a Buddhist, which means he’s miles ahead of us in terms of awareness and spiritual enlightenment and so on. For him, the people of ‘our culture’ are the people of the West, and the people of the East belong to an entirely different culture.”
“I take it this person is himself a Westerner.”
“Yes, he is. What does that have to do with it?”
Ishmael shrugged. “Westerners often think the East is one vast Buddhist temple, which is rather like thinking the West is one vast Carthusian monastery. If the teacher you mention were to visit the East, he’d certainly experience many new things, but he’d find, first, that the food is all under lock and key and, second, that humans are considered to be a miserable, destructive, greedy lot, just as they are in the West. These are the things that qualify them to be named people of your culture.”
“Are there really people in the world who don’t think they’re a miserable, destructive, greedy lot?”
Ishmael considered this for a moment and said, “Let me turn that question back to you in this way. In your fantasied journey into the universe, were you planning to look for other cursed races?”
“No.”