Diversity and Commonality

I look out at the scene of grass, bushes and trees in my backyard with the late day sun shining on different places, and I wonder how many greens do I see in this one little place? If I were painting this view, how many colours would I need to mix in with green (and which green would I use) to capture the multitude of greens – those in the shadow, those in the sun, those textured with spindly leaves or flowing in the wind, those that are fading, those that are new. I’m sure I would need thousands of different greens to make this one little patch look alive. And yet, whether they’re prickly and rigid or flowing and bushy, they’re all green, because they all have chlorophyll, the life-giving ingredient that transforms sunlight into green. Diversity and commonality.

I think of cultures. Despite the fact that we are all genetically the same, humans have created on this little planet vastly different cultures. Traditional indigenous cultures around the world see themselves as family members with trees, animals, mountains. As a result, they treat and relate to the trees, animals and mountains quite differently than we who grew up in the West do. They see the space around us as imbued with ancestors and spirits. They are relatives to the land and thus, one must pay attention to, revere, and learn from the land rather than see it as empty space that one may redesign for one’s own personal profit. As ethnobotanist, Wade Davis, writes about the Indians of the Amazon, “rivers are not just routes of communication, they are the veins of the earth, the link between the living and the dead, the paths along which ancestors travelled at the beginning of time.” (Wayfinders, p. 95) In Polynesia, there are navigators who – without using any tools other than the observation of waves and currents – can guide boats to islands they cannot see. Hunters in the Kalahari desert in Africa read the sand for clues to water, honey and animals.

A culture such as Hinduism sees life recycled into another being at the end of this life. As a result of that view, they see opportunities for ‘do overs’, and a diversity of different possibilities that is mind boggling. Not only does an individual have multiple lives in this tradition, but universes do as well. That is quite a different way of understanding life than a culture such as Islam or Christianity which sees this life as the one and only opportunity to get it right. And mind you, neither view is just a matter of beliefs, it’s really quite a different way of understanding and living reality. But as different as both ways are, humans in both cases recognize that our deaths inform our lives and that what we do with our lives has consequences. Diversity and commonality.

The rituals humans do – those markers for life events such as birth, adolescents, marriage, death – reflect the differences in cultural understanding of reality. The Jewish ritual of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah where a young person reads from the holy scripture is quite different than the scarification ritual in Papua New Guinea or a Hopi kiva experience in which a young man is put into an underground cave for a period of months to be reborn by mother earth. In the African country of Ghana the spirit of the dead person, who will still be an active ancestor in the community, is sent to the other side in a coffin resembling something they did in this life – perhaps a fish for a fisherman, a plane for an international business person or a shoe for a shoeshine boy. That is quite different than our way of dealing with a dead body here in the U.S. or in China. And yet, all cultures have rituals marking transition times: of initiation rites that bring young people into the larger community, marriage, death. All cultures have pilgrimages, physically challenging travel that combines spirit and land. The lessons to be learned from the rituals may be different. But the purpose is the same. Diversity and commonality.

Languages, religion and art all are examples of diversity and commonality. They use different vocabularies and grammars, different symbols and movements, different media and myths. But they all communicate the most intimate or passionate, the most inspiring or banal, the most emotional or analytical, of our human thoughts and feelings. We can express love and wisdom, hatred and cruelty with all three forms of human expression, and they will reflect different cultural values and different times. But as the writer in Ecclesiastes notes: “A generation comes, a generation goes, there’s nothing new under the sun.” There is always a longing in the human spirit for connection to something beyond ourselves, however we may express it. Diversity and commonality.

As a cultural anthropologist – both in my personal and professional life – I find the diversity and commonality of human life heartening, interesting, and vital to a multidimensional understanding of life. And I find the work and words of Wade Davis to be essential to everyone: “Every effort should be made…to understand the perspective of the other, to learn the way they perceive the world, and if at all possible, the very nature of their thoughts.” (Wayfinders, p. 70)

Furthermore, we better do it soon – as much of the diversity which makes this planet so interesting is being lost in so many ways! Not only in the biosphere but also in what Davis, calls the ethnosphere. He points out there are currently 7,000 languages spoken on the earth now. But more than 50% of them will disappear within the next 40-50 years. Globalization, hegemony, and cultural domination are destroying cultures as fast as forests in the Amazon. Communities once nestled in the integrity of their culture, are being ripped apart by industrialization which leaves them unmoored and poor in ways that didn’t exist before. Which is a shame as different cultures offer different solutions to life problems.

The different greens and the different textures in my backyard are what make it interesting and beautiful. The different cultures and realities in this world do the same.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Wade Davis’ book, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World:

“Our [Western] way of life, inspired in so many ways, is not the paragon of humanity’s potential…Were societies to be ranked on the basis of technological prowess, the Western scientific experiment, radiant and brilliant, would no doubt come out on top. But if the criteria of excellence shifted, for example to the capacity to thrive in a truly sustainable manner, with a true reverence and appreciation for the earth, the Western paradigm would fail. If the imperatives driving the highest aspirations of our species were to be the power of faith, the reach of spiritual intuition, the philosophical generosity to recognize the varieties of religious longing, than our dogmatic conclusions would again be found wanting…the plight of diverse cultures is not a simple matter of nostalgia or even of human rights alone, but a serious issue of geopolitical stability and survival.” (pp. 195-196,198) .