Month: October 2021

A living culture adapts to the changing needs of its people. Syncretism and fragmentation occur organically wherever communities meet and part ways over time. Imperialism and colonization add a dimension of political and economic inequality to these interactions. A colonizer culture expands in order to plunder material resources. They maintain power by plundering cultural resources and forcibly exporting their own culture. Assimilation becomes a survival strategy for the colonized, and the colonizers reap the value of cultural icons of interest to their own people.

New Age spirituality often reproduces these dynamics. Religious icons, philosophical texts, and traditional clothing are manufactured and sold by colonizers to colonizers, exploiting the labor as well as the culture of the colonized. Literary and philosophical traditions are filtered through teachers like Helena Blavatsky who adopted an “Orientalist” aesthetic to make her spiritual system more exotic and mysterious. As concepts are lost in translation, the colonizer recipients are unable to learn and practice with respect even if they are interested in doing more than bathing in an aesthetic of “exotic” well-being.

Cultural appropriation includes two ethically compromised behaviors. Individuals in colonizer cultures perform cultural appropriation by adopting artifacts of a colonized culture as ornaments divorced from their original context and significance. Cultural appropriation continues when colonizers capitalize on that ornamentation by controlling the production and trade of exported artifacts, often exploiting the labor of colonized people to do so. The latter instance replicates the immoral exploitation of the working class by the owner class, but the former instance robs colonized people of equality and mutual respect.

Colonizers elevate the artifacts that they value but not the people who created them. Cultural appropriation reduces the value of the colonized by making it subject to the pleasures of the colonizers. Mutual respect requires understanding one another as equals, each holding intrinsic value and protected status as moral agents. Looting the material, intellectual, and philosophical culture of a people places colonization at the center of any interaction between individuals from the respective cultures. Culture then become another axis of identity that owners can use to divide the working class and prevent organization against the owner class who drive colonization and exploitation.

As discussed elsewhere some traditions place value on openness to converts and synthesis with complementary features of other traditions. Absent power dynamics, missionary traditions can form bridges between peoples and support adaptation to change. Cultural appropriation remains a risk with missionary traditions when historical and current power asymmetries poisoned peer relationships, but missionary traditions generally maintain a path for proper initiation under the right circumstances. When approaching with respect new members can join and found new branches of the tradition as interpreted through a new cultural lens.

While spirituality may be framed in terms of sentiment and feeling, philosophy often plays a crucial role in defining a tradition. The demand for unquestioning faith rarely appears outside of fringe movements. Most traditions offer an account of divinity, the universe, morality, and how one arrives at knowledge of those things. Reflection on mysteries and paradoxes abound but do not crowd out rationality. In some cases critical analysis serves as a requirement for faith as it requires one to engage fully with texts and concepts.

Through honest and respectful study, scholars may find ethically sound paths into missionary and even closed traditions. Nevertheless, study alone does not avoid the moral concerns of cultural appropriation. One can be a sincere scholar and still participate in colonizer networks of exploited value, and in practice a scholar might not have much agency over that participation. Buying “public domain” texts translated recently enough to copyright may indirectly feed a colonizer-owned publishing or distribution company. Decorating one’s academic office with sacred figures reproduced by the labor of the colonized and sold by the colonizer would constitute more direct participation.

Access and entry into a tradition is defined by the tradition and its lineage-holders. To approach with demands and expectations is to approach with the attitude of a colonizer. If one feels a sincere attraction toward a tradition, one should engage in respectful study in order to understand the tradition, its history, and its boundaries. Irrespective of the specific tradition, one should approach with humility and be open to honest wonder as well as critical discomfort. Colonization has spoiled much potential for organic conversation and synthesis, so we must heal those rifts by forsaking colonizer attitudes, approaching as aspirants rather than novitiates.

Navigating the ethical pitfalls of cultural appropriation requires approaching a tradition with respect and taking only what is freely given. When a tradition offers its deep philosophy, some who study it may find themselves persuaded by the arguments. The intellectual relationship with a tradition contrasts with shallow adoption of practices or rote repetition of summarized beliefs. Mimicry of outward appearance without understanding the underlying substance allows colonizers to redirect value from the colonized. Engagement with the fundamental premises requires deep understanding, humility, and respect.

Race serves to divide the working class by bribing one group with privilege over the other. Membership in racial groups varies across history, widening and narrowing to serve the needs of the privileged group. Irish and Italian immigrants were granted membership into whiteness to maintain alignment against Black people during the Jim Crow era. Race is a condition inflicted on a people to make them vulnerable to the imperialist machinations of the owner class. Once one accepts that race is socially constructed, one must also accept that whiteness, the privileged identity group, is also socially constructed.

Even though whiteness is the privileged group, individuals who identify as white remain vulnerable to being denied whiteness. Just as previously distinct identity groups were admitted to whiteness, any identity group can be made into an Other and ejected from the privileged group. Any immutable characteristic can be totalized to define an identity group distinguished from the “default” whiteness. Even mutable characteristics can be leveraged as markers of degeneracy that disqualify one for the full privileges of whiteness. Any person born “white” might find themselves on the wrong side of privilege by choice or circumstance.

Across the diversity of identity groups and intersecting identities, the pattern of vulnerability remains. Conforming to the privileged group’s values and expectations may grant some share of advantage, perhaps limited by one’s ability to “pass” as the privileged identity. Such grants remain contingent on the perfection of one’s conformity and the convenience of the privileged group.

The only social grouping not vulnerable to being divested of privilege are the owner class. The owner class utilize whiteness and other divisive tools to maintain control over people and resources. Ultimately, as long as an individual retains enough wealth and influence to remain in the owner class, they are able to purchase any privilege. To align with the interests of the owner class is to abandon other identities for exploitation. Individuals who ascend to the owner class from a low-status identity group may face residual discrimination, but they leave behind fears of the martial class as long as they have wealth and its signifiers.

If one accepts these arguments, the working class vulnerability to discrimination becomes evident. While members of privileged identity groups may benefit temporarily by supporting the exploitative hierarchy, their own interests will be abandoned when they no longer intersect with the owner class. At such a time the owner class may redefine the social constructs that uphold privileged groups, and the workers now branded as degenerate take their place alongside the oppressed.

Even if the owner class extends privilege on a limited basis, workers who are so “elevated” do not share the long term interest of the owner class. As long as one can be deprived of those privileges, a worker’s interest is best aligned with their fellows, even across the boundaries of identity groups. Solidarity does not require forsaking identity, only recognizing that class conditions provide an avenue for trust across identities. Shared vulnerability to the owner class provides a basis for trust as long as one guards against the short term temptation to embrace the bribes of fragile privilege. The owner class relies on the success of those temptations to keep the workers divided against themselves.

When unpacking the dynamics of class struggle, one can easily despair at the success of the owner class’s strategies. Nurturing hope requires that one also study strategies the working class can use to turn the tide. The owner class maintains its position by dividing the working class against itself. As the working class closes those divides in order to retake its power, they have many ways to exert power they already possess.

All social institutions play a part in upholding class divisions or funneling value from the working class to the owner class. Workers contribute to their own exploitation because incentives are arranged to motivate it. Capitalism crowds out imagination of alternate worlds, so one may have no idea how any individual action can overcome these entrenched dynamics.

To transition from diagnosis to treatment, one must study the mechanics of social change. A student of history has the advantage in this pursuit, but the insights of psychology, sociology, and anthropology provide abstract models that avoid getting lost in the nuances of complex events. At minimum, one should understand how incentives influence motivation, how social bonds form, and how to communicate with empathy.

Distributed power structures sometimes appear slow to act because effort and direction spread evenly through the organization. Individuals must recognize a consensus, agree to align with it, and invest effort accordingly. Every individual’s decision has equal weight in such a dynamic. Hierarchical power structures appear to act more efficiently because direction concentrates at the top while effort spreads through the base. One person’s decision guides the effort of many people. The hierarchical dynamic works as long as everyone recognizes the leader’s decision as have more weight than their own.

Hierarchies collapse when the base ceases to recognize the authority of the peak. When the leader’s decision no longer outweighs the worker, the workers return to a distributed power structure that organically arises in communities of equals. Consensus becomes the basis for decisions, so the former leaders must accept their share of both effort and influence alongside everyone else. They have no choice other than to participate because their ability to exercise power depended only on the voluntary surrender of the workers will.

Hierarchies purchase control at the cost of action. The leader directs the effort of others but spends their own effort only in the directing. If the workers cease cooperating, the leaders give orders to a void. Only the lack of trust and established social bonds among the workers prevent organizing strategic work stoppages to halt the capitalist economic engine. In such a general strike, workers would need to be confident that their networks of mutual aid can adequately fulfill their needs. They would need to be willing to give what they can to their networks to maintain reciprocity. The actions to take once trust is established are very simple and would be led and coordinated by the workers themselves. Building the networks of trust and mutual aid is the first and last strategy; it is required for all subsequent ventures, and it must be maintained through regular sharing and exchange.

As an imperialist political economy, capitalism expands to fill available space. Whatever it touches turns into a commodity in the network of owners and owned. The market model and theory of property eclipse older ideas and draw what was public into private hands. After generations of imperialism, imaging alternatives to commodity markets and private ownership becomes difficult if not impossible. When workers object to exploitation by the owner class, the owners point to the prevalence of the economic theory as proof of its success. Only capitalism can deliver the liberty, plenty, and prosperity that contemporary society has to offer, even if it only delivers those things to the owners. Alternative theories have been tried and collapsed into capitalism, serving as further proof of the theory.

Capitalism’s colonization works similarly to other totalizing theories. Concepts posited by the theory are read backward in time, forcing old arrangements into the mold of the new theory. Nuances are reduced to the model’s terms to erase traces of the changes wrought. In particular measuring value by quantities of currency allows the capitalist to subsume any exchange of goods or services into their market model. Once capitalism is entrenched, students learn history through the capitalist lens and as such often cannot imagine any alternate arrangements.

Progress through history is a key assumption of modernism and one that implicitly supports the captialist supremacy narrative. The conceit of many Modernist scholars is that human civilizations develops through a similar set of stages from nomadic hunter-gatherers to citizens of nation-states with complex economic, social, and technical institutions. This perspective, sometimes called “whig history”, reflects imperialist attitudes that drive the Modern era. Northwestern European society was hailed as the triumph of civilization, so “less advanced” societies would be served by accepting the values, technology, religion, and customs of Northwestern Europe, especially liberalism and its capitalist political economy. Whig history lends justification to “the white man’s burden” to bring the light of civilization to the world. As a component of political liberalism, capitalism then serves as the beacon toward which all developing economies should move.

The narrative of historical progress breaks down significantly under critical scrutiny. Scholars who have rejected the imperialist bias find that technology, customs, and politics change over time but not in a uniform direction. Post-modernists call into question the very framing of “direction” since it still assumes that some political orders or customs can be placed on an objective value hierarchy. Rejecting whig history, one can instead see capitalism as a movement in human civilization, one with both a beginning and an end. Capitalism is not the most robust economic theory possible, nor even the most robust theory to have been implemented. Where we do judge politics and customs, we should do so according to overarching moral principles not by comparison to any given “most advanced” society.

Ethics defines a few principles that bound morality. Among these is the axiom “ought implies can.” Moral responsibility ends where capability ends. This principle affirms that one is never expected to do the impossible even though our feelings of guilt or regret may indicate otherwise. One cannot demand and should forgive someone who fails to keep an obligation due to circumstances beyond their control.

Usually, “ought implies can” appears in arguments about the limit of moral responsibility. A person is morally obligated only to the extent fulfilling the obligation is possible. One may have a moral duty to pull someone away from a ledge before they fall, but one does not have a duty to fly into the air to rescue someone already falling. On the other hand, increased capability implies an correspondingly elevation of moral responsibility. The more one can do, the more one should do.

While ethicists generally agree that one is not obligated to accept harms to themselves in order to do good, luck egalitarians argue that people have an obligation to use their natural talents or accidental advantages to benefit others. Assuming that some people simply find themselves in advantaged situations or in possession of inborn talents, those people have an obligation to make themselves worthy of those gifts. By taking on that obligation, naturally advantaged people redistribute their good fortune, using it to help others. They become morally obligated to do so because of their capability and the circumstances that bestowed them.

As such, one might conclude that circumstance also informs capability from a moral perspective. Much like natural talents, an agent cannot control happening upon a situation in which some good needs to be done. If an agent sees an injured person while on a walk, and there does not appear to be any assistance on the way, the agent should act on the moral duty to prevent harm. If the agent recognizes that moral duty, they have an on-going obligation to watch for potential harms insofar as they are capable. Where multiple agents recognizing this duty are in the same situation, any one may abstain from intervening as long as at least one takes up the duty to prevent. Where one is alone, one must assume that duty oneself. Circumstance and ability may position an agent to be the sole possible candidate for accepting a moral duty. In such cases capability and circumstance bestow the obligation.

Collective action problems can arise when multiple agents who agree on the scope of moral duties all recognize an opportunity to enact their duty that can fulfilled by any one of them. If all agents involved wait for another to act, the situation may pass without fulfilling the duty. These issues can be mitigated if one also considers bias to action a component of moral duty. A moral duty defines an action to be performed, so the normative force of the obligation must likewise motivate an agent to respond to the duty with action unless another agent has already done so. In other words when an agent finds themselves looking for someone else to do something, they should then accept that the duty falls to them and take action.