Areas of Unrest

10 September 2000 - Everybody Knows

QOTD: "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." -- Mark Twain

Reading: the September / October 2000 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Listening to: Scriabin's "Symphony No. 3, Op. 43" (a.k.a. "Divine Poem") performed by the USSR TV and Radio Large Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Fedoseyev, conductor

Columbine was writing recently about things she thinks that everybody should know. Coincidentally, I had been thinking about how often the phrase "but everybody knows that" comes up in conversations with Robert, usually in relationship to things that almost nobody knows. (Lest you think that I am picking on him, I am just as guilty. Both of us are intellectual snobs. And proud of it.) Which gives me an excuse for a minor rant on the subject of what people should know and why.

Simply stated, what people should know is whatever it is they need to live their lives. The core knowledge I expect of a subsistence farmer in Malawi is considerably different from the core knowledge I expect of an urban American. However, one should also recognize that limitations in what you know affect your social mobility. My hypothetical subsistence farmer is going to be struggling along, raising a handful of tomatoes and onions, if he (or, more likely, she) doesn't learn how to read. My hypothetical urbanite is going to starve to death if forced to live the life of the subsistence farmer.

That's it for cultural relativism. The problem goes away once you realize that it's easy to mix up two types of lists of what you should know. There's very little similarity between a list of "life skills" and a list of "things that make you culturally literate." The first list is more universal, though there are specifics that differ from culture to culture. For example, I'd argue that everybody should know how to make basic repairs to clothing. For me, that includes things like sewing on buttons and fixing a hem that's fallen. Those are less useful specifics if you're in Southern India and you always wear a lungi (essentially, a sarong). Similarly, being able to provide yourself with a simple meal could mean scrambling an egg, cooking rice and beans, or treating manioc so that it isn't poisonous. You don't want to eat manioc that I've prepared.

Of course, our particular culture also demands some other life skills that may be irrelevant in some parts of the world. An American who can't balance his or her checkbook is incompetent to live an adult life. But one couldn't apply that standard in China, where checking accounts have only been available for a couple of years and only a handful of people have them. Being able to manage livestock is critical in much of the world, but hardly relevant in Los Angeles.

When one starts getting into the whole question of cultural literacy, it gets even messier. Should one start demanding that Americans become familiar with the Bhagavad Gita and that Indians memorize the Gettysburg Address? We don't even need to go that far. Should engineers have read Milton and humanists know how to integrate by parts?

I'm hesitant to answer 'yes' but I'll fall back on my "you're limiting yourself if you don't know this stuff" argument instead. The single thing I think is most essential is a willingness to learn when confronted with references you're unfamiliar with. If you haven't mastered the basics of a culture, you are either going to spend a lot of time looking things up (or asking questions) or be confused a lot. If you're confused a lot in your own culture, it's pretty hard to get on with life.

For example, if you don't have a passing familiarity with the main stories of the Bible, you're going to have a hard time reading much Western literature. If you don't have a basic grasp of world history, reading the newspaper is going to be a challenge. This may not matter if you never spend time with people who talk about literature or current events. But I'd probably find you rather dull.

On the other hand, I love explaining things to people. The other night, we were playing trivia and, in response to a question regarding basenjis (a breed of dog that can't bark), somebody commented that they had read that Italian greyhounds can't bark either. Which elicited the remark, "well, of course an Italian greyhound would observe omerta." Half of us laughed and had to explain to the rest that "omerta" is the Mafia code of silence. Now, that's something that I'd normally say that "everybody knows" but it was obvious that some people didn't and it was simpler to explain and let them in on the joke. It also makes a difference that this was a group of people who I know are generally culturally literate. Even though I enjoy getting into lecture mode, that's true only for limited periods of time. If I have to explain every intellectual reference, I'm going to tire of it sooner or later.

How this applies to my own ignorance of pop culture is an exercise for the reader. Which is what lecturers always say when they want to dodge a question.