Paradigm Articles

6. Culture as Community Creativity

Culture as community creation, property and patrimony

Critique of overspecialized artistry and star system as elitist and separative in bases and consequences

Holistic view of culture as synergy of collective value-systems and practices of the community

Interrelation and balance of aesthetics and functionality

Community's cultural identity and enrichment as a component of collective self-respect and as basis for assimilation

THE 15 EMPOWERING PARADIGMS:

1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature

4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

5. Civics and Democratic Governance

6. Culture as Community Creativity

7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'

Culture Manifests
the ‘Collective Unconscious’

By Dr. Mina M. Ramirez

President, Asian Social Institute; and Council Member, Lambat-Liwanag Network

This combines an excerpt from Dr. Ramirez’s article, “Toward a Revolution of Mindsets,” one of two articles carried in the pamphlet, Reflections on Culture (ASI Occasional Monograph 2) and a descriptive quotation from her about dual cultural system in the Philippines carried at the back page of the same pamphlet. The pamphlet was first published in 1991, with the third printing in 1993. In this text she refers to ASI as “our Institute.” All emphases in the original. Full texts in pamphlet form are available from ASI.

HOW DO WE explain that despite the socio-cultural heritage from the West, from which we acquired elements of modern thinking through our schools, our leaders have not managed to bring this country to a level that could have emancipated our people from the bondage of poverty, inefficient government bureaucracy, graft and corruption, and indifference to what the common good demands from us? In other words, what is the socio-cultural system that explains our social situation at present?

Socio-Cultural System Defined

I define socio-cultural system as the complex of institutional dynamics, which is but a manifestation of the collective unconscious (the hidden dimension of a culture) that has developed through the historical evolution of a people.
The institutional dynamics of a society spells out the structures or the enduring patterns of relationships operating as extensions of culture, the deepest layer of which are values. Necessarily, these values have a high emotional content because these are perceived as basic to life-needs.

The workings of institutions, therefore, are externalizations of a culture. But there are two levels of culture – the surface culture and the hidden culture. We may differentiate them in another set of categories – the dominant culture (that which is explicitly propounded by the modernizing elite of our society) and the suppressed culture, that which is relegated to the collective unconscious and becomes the soil in which any external item from other cultures may be grafted to assume its own unique growth and evolution. This hidden dimension is sometimes more powerful than the external elements of a culture. When brought to the surface, they can be examined objectively and critiqued in terms of their functionality in relation to the explicit development goals of a people congruent to their personal and family goals.

The collective unconscious, the hidden dimension of a culture, lives in the minds and hearts of people. They are working in what sociologists call “mind-sets.” According to the biographical, experiential and cultural frame, a person may be conditioned, not necessarily determined, in that person’s response to life. While one may have a different mind-set from another, in a society, there may be patterns of mind-sets which have been conditioned by social and historical forces.

There may be different levels of mind-sets based on levels of exposure to these socio-historical forces. Elements of another culture, for instance, may impinge on a home-ground culture. The hidden dimension of a culture may act on these different levels of the dominant culture, which makes the analysis of a culture in its dynamism a very complex undertaking.

Core Values of Life

Culture is never static in terms of its external manifestations, for persons may change their behavior in response to change in external elements (change in the use of tools, technology, structures of institutions). However, different behavioral responses may operate according to the same enduring unconscious values and patterns or principles of life. And the unconscious principles or core values of life will endure as long as these are not objectified, brought to the surface, and reflected upon in a conscious and collective way. The external patterns – the institutional dynamics – will endure as long as these are the only means by which the people, as a whole, could respond to their life-needs. This dynamism, in turn, is very much conditioned by the differentiation of power and wealth in a society. Access to schools could be one factor that could cause, if not maintain, this power differentiation.

We all know that, at present, our social institutions are not responding to the people’s life-needs. This is the reason why grassroots groups have created their own alternative institutions.

How do we make our ordinary citizens take hold of themselves, make them realize the value of their local languages, allow them to reflect on their assumptions, and thus bring them to realize that their experiences are contained in the assumptions of their own local languages?

In our Institute, I have established what I call a tent school (kulandong), the purpose of which is for grassroots leaders from rural and urban areas to reflect on the assumptions of the Filipino language. Together with them, I have discovered that the categories of Buhay (Life), Loob (inner self), ka- (as signifying relationships), ginhawa (no obstruction to life – an expression of well-being), and pananalig sa Diyos (trust in God) are very basic in expressing the worldview of the lowly-schooled Filipino.

Utilizing these categories, I have been able to explain the meaning of the money economy to them, the values behind a money economy which is characterized by interdependence, calling us to solidarity (pagkakawing-kawing, bigayan ng buhay).

Through values of paghahanap-buhay (search for life), it is possible to motivate them to think in wider perspectives than just the kapit-bahay (the next-door neighbor) or the kamag-anak (relatives).

The beginning of our salvation is to be bridge-builders between the schooled and those who have little schooling, which is practically the difference between the haves and the have-nots, between the urban and the rural areas. The challenge is to discover shared symbols and values in our people utilizing a participative-collective approach to learning, discovering together, the richness of our local languages, surfacing the most profound values embedded in them, and allowing people to think in broader perspectives.

The above process will awaken the seat of the Filipino’s human dignity (loob). Together we should ask, how shall we begin to promote life (magbigay-buhay) to many, for instance, through an economy that cannot afford to be kanya-kanya (individualistic)? For a modern economy is basically a pagkakawing-kawing (a linking up of people, lives being intertwined) in producing goods or in serving people through which those who participate are given life. Through this process we are awakened in our consciousness as persons with profound values, the local expressions of which could suggest and trigger an understanding of the modern world of today, it new meanings are imputed in these expressions.

To develop one’s cultural identity does not mean a retrogression to a world that has gone by. Rather, it is an awakening of the hidden dimension of a culture to which can be imputed new meanings based on the conditions of the present. It is bringing together of the past and the future into the present, recharging the present with new energies that constantly recreate and renew the world, and developing, in a humane way, persons in the process.

I aspire for a total revolution of mindsets both from the highly-schooled and the lowly-schooled so that in a common venture all Filipinos may truly get educated to bring forth authentic human development of a people-in-process, a nation-in process.

Dual Cultural System in the Philippines

The Philippines operates in a dual cultural system: the traditional or popular cultural system, having its origins in our indigenous roots, and the dominant cultural system, sometimes called the modern system, which has been imposed on us by colonial powers…

We cannot do away with either system because both are part of our socio-cultural heritage.

The challenge for us who belong to the dominant system, by virtue of being schooled in it, is to root ourselves in our popular culture and, from within this system, culturally translate to our people the value-system promoted by the modernization process to which we need to contribute in order to have greater access to the life-flow in the world.

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