Carolyn Carney
Discovering Your Neighbors’ Secret Culture
guest writer: Paul Grant
Socialist Academics don’t often make good cowboys. That’s why my Alma Mater brews its own beer.
Local culture is alive and well in North America, despite gloomy analysis from pop-culture observers. Yes, the same strip malls can be found from coast to coast. Yes, the same TV shows are popular around the world. But something else is still out there. But if we expect everyone to be “normal”, it can be more than a little unnerving when local flavor bubbles to the surface.
Your job as a neighbor is to find out who the people are among whom you’re living. Your job is to look, listen and taste what makes your neighbors tick.
People all around the world are familiar with American consumer culture, and even think the world of television is the real world of American life. But the truth is somewhat deeper. In his 1981 novel A Flag for Sunrise, Robert Stone places a drunken American anthropology professor in front of a hostile room of professors from an imaginary Central American university. Professor Holliwell staggers through some remarks about Mickey Mouse and pop-culture before abandoning his prepared speech. He then explains:
“I would like to take you into my confidence in one regard …We [Americans] have quite another culture concealed behind the flash that we’re selling. It’s a secret culture. Perhaps you think of us as a nation without secrets – you’re wrong. Our secret culture is the one we live by. It’s the one we’ve beaten into wave upon wave of immigrants who in turn have beaten it into their children. It’s not for sale – in fact, it’s none of your business” (p. 108).
Indeed, secret cultures are alive and well across this apparently secret-less continent of ours – but not as intentional secret societies or cults. Most local flavor is unknown to outsiders because it is so obvious to the insiders that no comment is felt necessary.
But every once and a while, local insider culture jumps out of the background to interfere with our expectations. At those moments we need to start digging deep to find out why our neighbors feel the way they do.
Here’s an example, from my college, the University of Wisconsin. It’s a famously left-leaning school, but never had a significant free-speech movement. The UW was recently named the top party school in the country, and the student body consumes outrageous amounts of beer. In the surrounding city of Madison, the labor presence is very strong, and the ties between town and gown are exceptional.
Madison is no standard liberal college town, because of a particular and peculiar set of events, all of which happened a century and a half ago, in 1848 – ancient history by today’s pop-culture standards, but a mere breath away next to human history.
Four events occurred that year:
1. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed between the US and Mexico, effectively transferring California and parts or wholes of eight other states to the US.
2. Gold was discovered in California, triggering a culture-wide fever, which culminated in the 1849 Gold Rush. Between these two events, and the 1843 establishment of the Oregon Trail, most of the American national imagination was monopolized by the western frontier.
3. Wisconsin was admitted to the Union. For the most part a wild forest- and swamp-landscape, with harsh climate, the natural wealth of the area (good soil) would require back-breaking work to exploit. Compared to opportunities in the West, the new state found it nearly impossible to attract settlers in large numbers, at least from within the United States.
But the founders of the state wrote into the state constitution a requirement to establish a University (which would become the UW). The trouble was that few professors were to be found, who were willing to teach in log-cabin classrooms in the howling wilderness. The solution lay in the fourth and most significant event that year …
4. Botched Communist and Liberal revolutions across Europe. The year that saw the publication of Marx’ Communist Manifesto also saw pitched battles across Europe between revolutionaries and protesters. Many of the leaders of this movement were University Professors, people who lost their jobs when the revolutions were smashed. Thousands sought political asylum in the US, the so-called “Forty-Eighters”.
All this to say, by the end of the year 1848, a small University in Wisconsin needed to recruit teachers, and many communist professors, who couldn’t dig gold, herd cattle or plow soil, were looking for jobs. They hooked up. UW Madison soon came to be dominated by German socialists, and the university’s liberal reputation grew out of that legacy. UW had the first University-level courses on labor studies and unions; Prof. Witte from the UW authored Roosevelt’s SSA legislation; the school is a pioneer in the cooperative aspects of agriculture.
The Germans also brought a taste for festivals and beer. When communism became unpopular in the United States, and the constitution was amended to ban alcohol, local descendents of the 48ers perceived the two developments as a dual-pronged attack on their German-ness.
Today, in the 21st century, many people come to the UW expecting to find “liberalism”. But they mistakenly conflate Jeffersonian liberalism with Marxian liberalism. Once we can tell the difference, we can tell how to specifically address a given campus’ felt needs.
What’s the story on your campus? What is the history behind your town, your province, or your family? As a neighbor, who wishes to bring Christ’s love to a lost world, your duty is clear: find out your neighbors’ secret culture.
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