CREATED EQUAL

(Franz Boas [1858-1942] was a German-born Jewish-American anthropologist, often called the “Father of American anthropology,” and counted as one of the most influential Jews in history [at #63 on the Michael Shapiro List].)

There is a large paragraph on Franz Boaz in my unposted Tikkun Olam entry Shapiro’s Greatest Hundred, and in the future I intend to write an essay on what I am calling “egalitarian” anthropology,  which claims that the races of mankind show equally the human capacity to develop cultural forms, and that differences in the outcome are to be attributed to historical-cultural, rather than genetic factors. But even within this “counter-genetic” community there is a big difference of opinions. Many anthropologists have argued that some peoples have achieved so-called “higher” cultural states than others, as a result of environmental, cultural, and historical circumstances. However, as Boas suggested, opening a new page of cultural relativism in anthropology, the so-called evolutionary view is derived from the view of ‘them’ as inferior, whereas in his view all surviving human groups have evolved equally, but in different ways.

This entry is not a discussion of anthropology or of the theories of Franz Boaz, but it is a specific comment on that particular view promoted by Boas and culminating in the following statement made in his famously scandalous and incredibly modern-sounding 1916 Letter to the New York Times:

“I have always been of the opinion that we have no right to impose our ideals upon other nations, no matter how strange it may seem to us that they enjoy the kind of life they lead, how slow they may be in utilizing the resources of their countries, or how much opposed their ideals may be to ours...

Our intolerant attitude is most pronounced in regard to what we like to call ‘our free institutions.’ Modern democracy was no doubt the most wholesome and needed reaction against the abuses of absolutism and of a selfish, often corrupt bureaucracy. That the wishes and thoughts of the people should find expression, and that the form of government should conform to these wishes is an axiom that has pervaded the whole Western world, and that is even taking root in the Far East. It is a quite different question however in how far the particular machinery of democratic government is identical with democratic institutions....
To claim as we often do, that our solution is the only democratic and the ideal one is a one-sided expression of Americanism. I see no reason why we shouldn’t allow the Germans, Austrians, and Russians or whoever else it may be, to solve their problems in their own ways instead of demanding that they bestow upon themselves the benefactions of our regime.”

(Tell this to the American “freedom-fighters,” of today, fighting for other people’s freedom, rather than for their own, on exactly such a presumption of politico-cultural superiority over the rest of the world!)

Despite my basic agreement with the gist of Boas’ letter to the NYT, my proper comment starts with a disagreement in principle. I believe that there is a confusion arising from the application of the “created equal” principle to nations and human cultures, instead of properly to individuals.

It is a well-known fact that an individual born to a demonstrably inferior culture, but subsequently raised in a superior culture, is by no means handicapped by his “genetic” backwardness. A good example here is that of Pushkin’s great-grandfather Hannibal, who rose from an African slave boy in Turkey to a decorated general in the Russian Army, then passing his genes to his illustrious and culturally iconic great-grandson…

Staying with Russia for the moment, following the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Russia in the thirteenth century, many Tatars realized the cultural superiority of the Russians and assimilated into their culture, resulting in new fresh Russian blood, both literally and figuratively speaking, and a most generous sprinkling of Tatar descendants of genius throughout the pages of Russian and world encyclopedias: Tatars, whom no Englishman, or European, for that matter, would ever again dare to call “Tartars,” invaders from hell.

There are too many other examples of similar cultural transformations, not just in Russia, but anywhere in the world, but the point has already been made quite convincingly, in my estimation.

The situation with nations and group cultures is different, however. One cannot possibly suggest that, say, a culture with an established literacy has “evolved equally but differently,” when compared to a culture without literacy, no matter how highly developed the latter’s oral tradition may be. Yes, such a thing as cultural superiority does exist. There is no equivalent of Plato, or Shakespeare, or Pushkin, or Wagner, or Einstein, among the lesser-endowed nations of the world, although, I repeat, an individual from an inferior culture is no less capable of “reaching to the stars” when transplanted to a superior culture than a native specimen of that superior culture.

Thus let us not confuse these two things: exceptional individuals “created equal” across the cultural spectrum, and demonstrably unequal social entities and cultures of the world.

Talking of the latter, whatever happened to the great Islamic Arab culture that used to be, during the Middle Ages, the greatest Civilization on the face of the earth, yet today has deteriorated so dramatically, torn apart by the internecine strife between the Shiah and the Sunni? Only a complete cultural illiterate or a bigot can talk of an Islamic cultural inferiority, yet the modern condition of this once richly blooming flower of humanity does leave a sad and puzzling impression on the student of historical anthropology…

On the other hand, looking at the sorry condition of culture in the preeminent industrially developed nations of the Western world, and particularly in the United States, I am indeed prepared to acknowledge that there is no cultural superiority of the Western pop culture over the cultures of the most under-developed nations in Africa or Polynesia. Cultural superiority does exist, of course, but only on the higher, elitist level of national development. Let us call it a case of conditional superiority.

There is no question that the Nietzschean testament to society of appreciating and supporting its native genius is, indeed, the most important task facing all civilized societies, as, minus that genius, Western society necessarily regresses to the low levels not just of primitive societies, but of all those primate herds whose connectedness to us, humans, was so precociously exposed, although in a slightly different context, by Charles Darwin, in what now seems ages ago.