Vessel

(In response to John Katz’s article)Click Here

Look, it is fine to be proud of who you are and where you come from. You listen to NPR, drink fair trade coffee, shun popular music and television. You respect everyone, don’t discriminate against anyone, and do everything differently because you know the right way to act, don’t you?

“Damn right I don’t listen to music that promotes violence, misogyny, and homophobia. Nor do I wallow in a pop culture that actively exploits anti-intellectualism.”

That’s the problem I have with the dominant UU culture. I don’t come from it. I was born in a trailer. Those songs that you disdain? They are my songs. The words that you use to describe them? Come from a college education, which most people I know do not have. I’m betting here that most of the people you know do. They know what you are talking about when you bring up social constructs. They know what it means and they shun it too.

I am glad for your culture. Sincerely. I am glad that you think you’re doing the right things. However, I’m also going to guess that you’re human, and this culture is no better than anyone else’s. Anyone immersed in their culture is going to think it’s the best. Don’t shop at Wal-Mart? That’s too bad. If you read the book Half The Sky, you’d know that is how the majority of women in China are pulling themselves up out of poverty and sending their kids to school, advancing their society further. By making stuff for Wal-Mart. Oh, I’m sorry, everything China does is wrong, isn’t it? Ok, I bet you buy or covet Apple products. That’s a thing I’ve seen in UU culture. You know that that Apple has had over 11 suicides at FoxConn (where they procure their high end technology)? Likely due to stress from being overworked. Which is also located in China. Throw your iPhones out, please. You don’t like how Wal-Mart is an opportunistic organization, taking advantage of their workers and smashing unions? Target ain’t much better, chap. No big box store is. Do you live on a farm, and make every single thing that you wear and slaughter and grow your own food? Even then, you’d have a slim chance of not participating in the oppression of popular society.

Before you ram down my throat about the superiority of your culture, know that I am not against it. I’m a white, fat, middle aged woman with two kids from Nebraska who doesn’t watch cable. Your culture overlaps mine, especially when I go to church. It becomes our culture.

The problem is that most of our culture is based out of a false sense of superiority. We think the things we do absolve us of societal problems. It’s utopianism that has got our denomination by the throat. We have built a walled garden too high. People who don’t look like us can’t get in, even when we beg them. We don’t understand popular culture, or we think we do and disdain it - and then wonder why not everyone on earth is a Unitarian Universalist!

In order for UUism to grow, we have got to understand popular culture. Not over analyze it, but be a part of it. We can’t have a conversation with the majority of the population if we don’t participate in most of it. Give up the things that are bad. However, you can’t ignore it or pretend that you don’t contribute to it. People can be changed only when they know where you are coming from and that you are on the same level as them.

So please, defend your culture. Really think about it. Think about who you’re leaving behind. But don’t think for one second that it is superior to any else’s culture. My culture, the poor whites, or the ‘Hard Living’ as Tex Sample describes it, certainly isn’t better than anyone else’s. But I wouldn’t give up my songs for anything. I know what they are. I know why they are sung. I know where they come from. I know what’s wrong with them. I tell my kids what it means, and why they’re wrong now. I tell them that they come from a place that is much different than mine now, and I hope that they learn from them. I hope they sing them anyway, as awful as they can be. But no one can take my songs from me. And heaven help you if you look at me in disdain while I blare my radio. I’ll start singing songs you didn’t even know were Unitarian Universalist.

(And I am sorry to have attacked you. If it’s comforting, I am not really attacking you. I hardly know you. I made a lot of assumptions about you, but they’re really a lot of assumptions about our UU culture, so I offer my apologies in advance.)