Cultural Conservatism Essay, Research Paper

Culture in ancient times was defined as the sum total of the equipment of the human individual, which enables him to be attuned to his immediate environment on the historical past on the other . It reflects in effect what humans have added to nature. It comprises the spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a society and includes, in addition to the arts and letters, the value systems, traditions, modes of life and beliefs of the society.

Through these aspects it is evident that the basis of growth and establishment of human culture is addition and change. However, in modern America this growth of culture is often resisted until it can no longer be held at bay. Many conservatives see these social changes as threatening because they feel that it will ultimately degrade the religious or social ethics which they personally hold.

However, to put it simply, and it’s not a problem that only conservatives have, conservatives very often confuse ethics and aesthetics. When people such as Gertude Himmelfarb, a conservative Christian historian, attack our, as she perceives it, “amoral,” “sexually deviant,” and “perverse” culture they are primarily responding to something that they find culturally foreign and aesthetically threatening.

I agree that values are oftentimes a good thing, but only when they are born of an ethical and realistic perspective, not an aesthetic one. We are all trying to make out an existence in unbelievably confusing circumstances. Given our biological inheritance, we need to be more tolerant of ourselves and more tolerant and compassionate in our dealings with others. The standards that we have for human behavior are at times noble, but at times quite absurd. We are genetically designed to be lustful, aggressive, gregarious, productive creatures, and it can be a good thing to hold ourselves to high community standards of behavior, but we need to deal with ourselves as who and what we are, not just what we think we’re supposed to be.

The conservatives want a seemingly neat and compartmentalized society wherein stable appearances are maintained and archaic cultural archetypes are adhered to religiously.

Many people grow up in a world of rigid cultural archetypes. With white businessmen going to office buildings while their wives stayed at home and their kids went to school, what most conservatives would consider a utopia; lots of money, prestige, cultural cohesion, and good conservative values. But these values are in fact aethetics, but because they have brought up to worship these myths, to question them is an admission of personal failure. What are these myths?: that money makes you happy, that society is right, that poverty is bad, that maintaining convention in every aspect of your life is the ultimate good, that variation from these ideas is sin, etc.

It s not that the opposites of these cliches are true. For the most part these criteria are irrelevant. Money can make life easier, but it can also make life miserable. Convention has some good points and some bad points. What it all comes down to is a flexibility that should allow for the well being of the individual without compromising the rights of other individuals.

One main group concerned with cultural conservatism in the United States, is the Christian traditionalists. Not trying to be inflammatory, but stating my personal opinion; the Christian right is neither. Here in the US vast numbers of politicians and religious leaders, the line between the two being rather blurry, are masquerading hate, racism, sexism, and ignorance under the banner of conservative Christian values.

Conservative Christian values are these – humility, mercy, compassion, love, honest, etc. Nowhere in the Bible does Christ encourage his followers to be intolerant, greedy bigots, or to lie, slander, steal, or be divisive along economic or cultural lines, preserving the ‘American way.’

We sit back and watch as cultural conservatives try to legislate their petty morality at the city, state, and federal level. They successfully overthrow school systems because they encourage condom distribution and an open-minded curriculum. Here’s a question – how are teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and a unnecessary, overly-filtered curriculum conservative?

When cultural conservatives name out their list of evils–homosexuality, single parent families, multiculturalism, etc, Many are left asking “why?” If people are happy being gay then what’s wrong with that? It may be a lifestyle that’s aesthetically different from what we’ve been taught, but so what? And single parent families? Better a loving single parent than none at all.

One reason that we have such a wide variety of alternative lifestyles is that the conventional lifestyles that the conservatives champion are often quite flawed and restrictive. Restrictive limitations can be terrific when applied to peoples’ violent impulses, but restrictiveness is terribly unhealthy when it’s used to get people to conform to subjective social standards. This restrictiveness can make people feel inadequate and inferior and it needs to be done away with. If someone’s gay, let them be gay. If your white son wants to marry a black woman (or white or yellow or Jew or Muslim) then let them. We need to love each other and support each other even if we choose to live in alternative but harmless ways. Obviously if someone is a rapist or a child molester, then you need to question your support of their actions and values.

In conclusion, I am not championing a retreat from responsibility. Personal and social well being is built upon a foundation of hard work, loyalty, honesty, diligence, respect, tolerance, and other values. But it doesn’t matter what the cultural manifestation of the values looks like. It can be straight or gay or male of female or white or black or anything so long as it’s respectful of other and makes the practicioner feel well.

So my advice to cultural conservatives and others would be to cultivate an approach to values that’s based on principles rather than aesthetics. I would also say that any pronouncements on the values of others need to be cautious, pragmatic, logical, and not just the typical hateful and reactionary stereotypes that we’ve grown so accustomed to. The world is a very complicated place, so how can we be rigid and militant in our beliefs about anything? Shouldn’t one’s beliefs be flexible enough to account for the complexities that we’re confronted with every minute of every day?