Reasons That Cultures Fade

I was sitting across the table from him. He had been a missionary for many years and had extensive experience working in cross-cultural situations. So I asked him, “John, there is concern in many circles that the beauty in many minority cultures is being destroyed by the influence of dominant cultures. Do you see this happening? If so, what do you perceive are the causes and how do we prevent it from happening?”

“You know, Alex, it is interesting that you should bring that up. I am not sure that you can prevent it but let me share an experience I had when I was living in a small village in Northern Thailand. It will give you some insight into the problem.

I was approached by a foreign photographer who had no idea who I was. In the course of our conversation he complained that the missionaries were destroying the culture of the Hmong people, with whom I was living. I thought that was an absurd idea, so I asked him how that could be. He said that the missionaries brought their Western culture and ideas with them and that infiltrated into the way the people lived. His concern was that the people were wearing more and more western clothes in place of their traditional clothes and this change was a threat to his photography business.”

“Well, John, it seems that he has a point there.”

“No, Alex, he was wrong. The Hmong people were moving to a western cultural dress, not because of the missionaries, but because they were being assimilated into Thai culture. The missionaries had a policy of dressing as the people did, so I often could be found wearing Hmong clothes. But the Thai had emerged from a very unstable regional conflict as the only free nation in the whole region. They faced the threat of communist aggression on their borders and the reality that the communists would try to deceive the minority groups in the outlying areas into siding with them. The Thai solution was to develop a very effective transportation and communication system throughout the country and assimilate everyone into Thai culture.

Because the Thai tried to do the modernization that took America 200 years in 25 years, they inevitably adopted many aspects of Western culture. They passed on those adopted tastes to the ethnic minorities they were assimilating.

For the Hmong, there were many benefits to this modernization. Western clothing was a whole lot cheaper than their own clothes. Their own clothes cost several hundred US dollars to make. With modernization came better health care and education as well.

The photographer’s interest in the Hmong was actually self-centered. It was bad for his business. He made money by taking the people’s pictures. They never saw any of the profits and most of them had no idea their pictures were on postcards all over the world.

Alex, many people are concerned that as a missionary, I am trying to change their belief systems. This is true, but I think the more legitimate concern should be, “am I teaching these people ideas that are true?” Not all ideas are equal. All cultures have beautiful and ugly elements in them. For example, among the people I work with, they beat their wives. They also believe that illnesses are spiritual and live their lives in fear of evil spirits. Often, they die before reaching the hospital because they spend days trying to appease the spirits before they are willing to go to the hospital. By then they are too late.

So there are many great things that every culture has to offer but no culture is perfect and certainly the reasons for cultural change are immense and varied. The reasons for cultural demise are becoming more diverse as we move toward a global economy where every culture is influenced by every other culture. In America, for example, even with the diversity of ethnic groups, we see a very clear homogenization of tastes and ideas that we describe as American culture. In the same way, we are seeing this homogenization at a global level.”

By the time we were done talking, it was late. I found myself walking home in the dark, lost deep in thought. I thought about all he has said about culture and found myself wondering, if all ideas are not equal, how does one determine what is beautiful and what is ugly in a culture? I also thought, if we are moving towards a global culture, how do we determine what is beautiful or ugly in our global culture?