*Creating Culture

 Last week, I had the opportunity to attend two seminars that in a way deal with the creation of culture. One, revisiting Leon Festinger's 'When Prophecy Fails' and presenting that the phenomena which was the object of study for this book could be fully explained by language and the patterns of old to new language. The cultural patterns of discourse and the synonymity or even metaphorical value of how language changes yet still functioning to a similar drum. The other seminar was one which measured the representation of Islam in the media. This seminar compared a study conducted in 1982 and replicated in... 2008 I think. Both are examples of how culture is created and then interpreted by scholars.

In the first seminar, about cognitive dissonance and the rich book: 'When Prophecy Fails'. Here the speaker, Dr. Timothy Jenkins, observes quite astutely that there were mutliple forces that were at play during the sequence of events that led up to a predicted end of the world on December 21 of 1954. Not only were there the role of the three mediums but also the social scientists themselves who infiltrated the group for study, and the media. The three brought into the group their own presuppositions and had to an extent pushed and forced the commitment of the prophecy as well as the existence of aliens. I would not disagree. The presuppositions of the mediums, the social scientists, and the press must have played a role in the way in which the events played out. This was the case with the Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo who also became part of the created culture and the roles that became them. In other words, the researchers were also part of the experiment and how it manifested. Nonetheless, I do not believe that it takes that much away from the findings of the social scientists. For Zimbardo, this was a door into thinking about social roles and how we embody those roles over time. This allowed him to consider a few insights into why good people do bad things or what he called the 'Lucifer Effect'. For Festinger, the events that surrounded the projected end of the world was a door into thinking about the theory of cognitive dissonance. That is, an investigation into the relationship between belief and behavior as well as the theory about internal states of cognitions in the face of new information. The good Dr. Timothy Jenkins, with a focus on Marian Keech (the medium who received writings from the aliens and predicted the end of the world) stated that the entire phenomena of Keech and the rest could be explained by language. In other words, the language and the rationale they made were nothing new and an investigation of past failed prophecies and the languages they used to justify what happened when the end did not come, would allow give sufficient explanation of the events surrounding this group without needing to talk about the theory of cognitive dissonance;  an investigation into language is a sufficient inquiry into cognition.

In retrospect, the argument that such phenomena could be explained by language and how old language becomes new language with a line of patternicity reminds me of american philosopher Richard Rorty, who also talked about the use of language and the abandonment of old language for the creation of new and the abandonment of being a slave to sociohistorical forces, that the greatest fear is finding one's self unoriginal. While Rorty provides somewhat of a romantic view as a solution for creativity and overcoming the cycles of being the same old fish. Jenkins talks about the old to new as a pattern that dates back ever since such prophecies were claimed. While I do not doubt that this may be the case, and I would not argue that indeed there were multiple forces including the social scientists who engaged in their observations contributed to the formation and perpetuation of culture of this cultic group. I think the emphasis on language and patternicity misses the point of where dissonance theory comes in and a gap that is all too commonly stepped over in anthropology. While discussions of power, discourse, and socio-historical forces shape persons and give rise to cultures, the people are not automatic sponges. There is individual variation. I think the study of belief in anthropology makes this clear. While we can talk about communal explanations and beliefs about certain things this does not mean that everybody believes it in the same way. And yet, anthropology has been reluctant, or so it seems, to take it further. 

While we can acknowledge that language indeed affects cognition, it is far from understood to what extent and the intircacies that revolve around this relationship. We are thinking and feeling agents. This, I would argue, is a human universal. All persons of all cultures have the capacity to think and feel within their own respective culture and language. The theory of cognitive dissonance is a motivational theory of expectation/anticipation and experience conglomerated in memory. By discussing cognitions and new cognitions from experience the discussion is enriched by taking language further into the phenomenological realm but also into the neurological and physiological realm of affect and action. What happens when things don't go according to plan? How was it that some believers would abandon one's job, house, and other possessions in anticipation of an event? If the second coming were tomorrow and you believed this, what would you do today? And then, what would you do when it didn't happen? The study of discourse patterns does not take it far enough but rather remains in a superficial realm of expression. The need to bridge the gap between communal and social forces that influence our thoughts of morality and the internalizing/embodying mechanisms that place value, with underlying emotional attachment, into the realm of cognition and action is ripe as ever.

The other seminar I attended complements this position. The representations of Islam in contemporary media has indeed influenced the way people, consumers of media, represent Muslims. In contrast to the early 80s in Britain, the press in 2008 presented much more negative views of Muslims and in relation to violent activities. I recalled a past seminar that mentioned the place of migrants into Great Britain and how the very first political movements were about worker rights, issues of race, and now the turn is into issues of religion. The emphasis on Islam is a recent stamp in the media. The causes that have led up to the present situation can be looked back into the early 90s and even further with the Iranian revolution, the Cold War, the Iraq war, Kuwait, and the politics of oil/energy, which is also to say global economics. Causes and histories are noticeably absent in the news. The emphasis on effect and action without the mention of reason is abundant. In so doing, the effect of negative impressions is noticeable in the people. Is the discussion of media representations sufficient to explain the animosity and negativity people form in their minds against those who are not like them? Does it explain the changes of views on morality throughout history? To an extent the explanations provide rich expositions of social, historical, and political forces but the gap of embodiment and identity remains. Is a theory of learning sufficient to explain the creation and perpetuation of culture?

Fully acknowledging the significance of studies into language and media, my contention is that these studies still fall short of an understanding of human cognition and the malleability it has as well as the power it has in creating and perpetuating culture. I think the investigations into psychology and the experiments conducted by Festinger, Zimbardo, Milgram, as well as case studies of brain lesions like the case of Phineas Gage, patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, and others are significant contributors to our understanding of culture and cognition. In the midst of it all we have religion as a significant social force not only for identity but morality as well to the extent that both influence and shape the way societies are governed, politics arranged and humanity glorified but subdued into passive submission under the auspices of particular ideologies, values, and methodologies of thought.