On The Third Hand

Thursday, 21 Feb 2002

Incompatible metacontext [permalink]

I've at times called myself called myself a 'cultural chameleon' -- that being the best description I can come up with for someone who delights in changing her own cultural assumptions into someone else's for a while. In order to do that; however, I must know my own worldview, my 'metacontexts', so that I can suspend belief in them long enough to try out others. I've also got to be able to get enough of an idea of the other's metacontexts to suspend disbelief long enough to look at the world through their eyes. I've never been completely successful at this, but I'm better than many.

I was rather delighted to find Perry's post on 'The metacontext of state-is-society' yesterday, because it gave me a nice new vocabulary. I'd been lacking a word for what he calls 'metacontext'. What he calls 'givens' are what I'd been thinking of as basic assumptions -- the 'little things' that one learns at one's mother's knee -- things that never are questioned. I'll use his terminology and create a hierarchy of terms, with 'givens' being the basic assumptions, 'metacontext' being a group of related 'givens' and 'worldview' being all of an individual's metacontexts. A culture (and a society) is made up of a number of people with worldviews containing a certain minimum number of metacontexts in common. A subculture is group with the basic metacontexts of a culture, plus other metacontexts unique to them, but not common throughout the culture.

Please note that I'm not a multiculturalist, at least in the commonly accepted definition of the term. I do judge cultures. Unlike many anti-multiculturalists, I do not think that you can accurately judge a culture without having some understanding of it. I find the automatic 'my culture is the only right one' stance to be just as alien to me as the 'all cultures are equally good (except for America's)' stance. Yeah... that last was a cheap shot -- but deserved.

I'm sure I've got a few eyes crossing by now -- and one or two wondering if I have a personality disorder that makes me enjoy this sort of mental twisting. I think of it as being similar to immersing oneself in a good SF or Fantasy novel. You suspend disbelief for a while, and live in that world, but then you come back to your own reality and think: "wow, I'd like to live in that world" or "let's hope that never comes to pass" or even "well, I didn't like most of it, but there was that one really good idea". And where am I going with this? Grab a drink and read on (there's quite a lot yet to be said).

This does have something to do with my general bellicosity. Honest! Since September, I've been trying to get into the mindset of the Islamic fundamentalists. (One should understand the enemy -- it gives an advantage.) I've been completely unsuccessful. I can understand Islam reasonably well, and have never had a problem getting along with those in that religion. But I had problems with fundamentalists. And there is the point... it's not just Islamic fundamentalists I had problems with. I had the same problem with Christian, Jewish, and Hindu fundamentalists. But I have had a breakthrough -- at least with Christians, and that gives me hope.

Kevin Holtsberry said something in my forum about a week ago (14th Feb), in a discussion on (I hate to use the word in here again) pornography. What he said (in reply to another post) was: "If you define people as "human type animals" than the discussing of sex is pointless." I stared at that post until my eyes crossed. I honestly could not figure out what he meant by that. After my eyes uncrossed (a day later), I asked a friend. My friend said :"He believes humans aren't animals." My eyes recrossed (Someone should have taken a picture.)

I googled "Humans are not animals". I came up with a lot. Mostly fundamentalist Christian sites. Very educational stuff -- if you believe in magic. Humans, it seems, are not animals -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- because a book says they were directly created by G-d. Ok... said I... is there any proof of this? "The bible says so," said my research. Oh. Ok... now that is a really interesting proposition. Humans, despite the fact that they live and die, that their bodies decompose, that they are EDIBLE, that they breed, that they eat, that they do every single thing that other animals do, are not animals.

Ok, Kevin. You got one of my 'givens' right in the keester. Knocked me for a loop. I delight in that. I enjoy it. So I took your "humans are not animals" idea (which you kindly reinforced yesterday) and did one of my little exercises with it -- and all the other 'givens' of the Christian right. That was my "missing link" into the mindset of the Christian fundamentalists. Adding that one unquestioned assumption into the equation makes the whole metacontext of the Christian fundamentalists fall right into place. Thank you. I have now been enlightened.

I have long been puzzled by the Christian fundamentalist metacontext. I could never understand how they could reject all evidence of evolution, how they could consider a book that mentioned "the four corners of the earth" inerrant, how they could be convinced beyond all doubt that their views are the right ones. It all follows if I add in that one assumption -- and it goes in a nice circle that says "If I believe that humans are animals, the bible is not inerrant, therefore we are not animals, and we cannot be descended from animals, and the bible is inerrant." Without the "humans are not animals", denial, it would be easy to discard biblical inerrancy -- but if you have the unquestioned given that 'humans are not animals', the only thing that backs you up is the idea that the bible is to be taken literally. Even if everything you see is in contradiction to that statement. Kevin is right about the futility of discussion.

So I shall never again argue sex with any of the religious right because: "If you deny people are "human type animals" than the discussion of sex (or almost anything else depending on physical reality) is pointless."

And I shall go back to trying to understand Islamic fundamentalists, with the understanding that this universe's physical reality may not apply to their metacontext.
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