Editorial: Evolution of Culture, and How It Is Just Like the Flow of a River

EDITORIAL
Ne News
27 February 2016

Ever gone to a river and see the water flow. Well, the water in a river never stops flowing. Well, culture is just like that. Culture in a particular area is not static, it is always evolving; and it will never stop. It never stopped in the past, and it will never stop in the future. It is always evolving in one way or another. This means that the culture you are witnessing in your part of the world would be different in fifty years. It would be different fifty years after that. And it would be different fifty years after that. It is always evolving and it would never stop evolving.

Take for example the indigenous cultures of North America. Around ten thousand years ago, Asian immigrants arrived in the Americas via a land bridge that today is the Bering Strait that separates North America and Russia. They probably had cultural ties to Asia, but over thousands of years, the descendants of these very ancient immigrants, the Native Americans went under cultural evolution, in which they developed their own language, their own culture and their own religions without any influence from the outside world. At the same time, these cultures were influenced by the culture of their nearest neighbours, contributing to the evolution of culture in North America, which is still taking place.

The same thing happened with the native people of Australia, who developed their own languages, their own cultures and their own religions based on the Dreamtime.

In Europe, many European cultures were influenced by the culture of their neighbours in nearby parts of Europe, and in some cases, further away. And many cultures of Europe are still evolving today due to people emigrating from their homelands to Europe and vice versa. And this has been happening for millennia (it is not a recent phenomenon as the mainstream and sadly some in the alternative media argue).

The culture of African-Americans and the culture of the Caribbean may have some African characteristics, but they evolved from African culture that was brought over by Africans who were captured by slave-traders or sold into slavery, and evolved differently from cultures back in Africa due to the suppression of African culture by the slave masters, and the constant breaking up of families as a result of children being sold to different plantations far away. In addition, slave masters forced their slaves to speak the language of their masters. This resulted in African-American and Caribbean cultures developing separately from the culture back in Africa.

Perhaps the most different culture of the descendants of these slaves was the Gullah (of which US First Lady Michelle Obama is a descendant of), which was isolated from other African-Americans. The Gullah culture maintained much of the African linguistic and cultural heritage of the various African people who were enslaved (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah). 

There is also talk of sending humans to Mars and beyond. And this is where it gets complicated. Mars is around 150 000 000 km away from Earth, with people receiving a one-way ticket to Mars with no prospect of returning to Earth. These isolated communities on Mars (if humans survive on Mars and are able to reproduce) will develop their own Martian language/s, their own Martian culture/s, and their own Martian religion/s. And because they will be on a different planet with a different ecosystem, they will also develop new characteristics to help them survive on Mars. And because they would be on a different planet, there is a possibility that the descendants of these Earth-born immigrants to Mars will become a completely different species in as short time frame as 300 years if there is an initial colony of 2000 people from Earth (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141002-time-to-plan-a-space-colony).

There is fears that the evolution of culture could be stunted due to the rise of the celebrity culture and so-called “reality television” shows such as I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which is designed to stop the evolution of culture and keep us dumbed down. Take the example the allegory used in the last two episodes of the 2005 season of Doctor Who (which starred Christoper Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor), in which the people of the Earth in the year 202 005 just watch reality television and game shows broadcasting from the Gamestation (formerally Satellite 5) twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (and the versions of these shows are more extreme than today's versions). No information, no nothing. Just brainless reality and game shows. These two episodes of Doctor Who shows what happens if we stop the evolution of culture.

 

But there is more to culture that just language and religion. Traditional music is also part of culture, but western culture and anti-intellectualism has had an impact on Bandung, which was named a 'creative city' by the United Nations, despite the fact that the city has no cultural institutions and has a culture of anti-intellectualism (http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/02/bandung-creative-city/). This anti-intellectual culture has its roots in the regime of General Suharto (who was installed by the United States of America), who killed intellectuals among others during his thirty-plus years as dictator in Indonesia.

There is much more to culture that it seems, and it should be stressed that culture is never static. It is always evolving, just like a river is always flowing.