American Political Culture Emphasizes
A speech on different cultural aspects with inspiration from Vaclav Havel
- Today, I’m invited here to give a speech to you addressing what I personally think about our societies, our world, and our thoughts toward this world. There’s plenty of hot issues need to be concerned, or to be talked about, and the most important thing is my ability to make them all clear so that you can understand me – therefore, I will try to express all my thoughts and concerns as successfully as I can, and thank you for being here with me today.
- Having been reading Václav Havel’s speech that he gave at Philadelphia in 1994 when he was awarded the Philadelphia Liberty Medal – I strongly agree with him at many points, and I would therefore be ready to stand up and defend those ideas if they were going to be attacked by others or simply that if those ideas were going to be laughed at by others. I feel that whatever Havel talked about in his speech are essential key points, and that all men must absorb and understand those ideas before this modern world collapses. Havel understands this complicated world more thoroughly than anyone else does – and I am very impressed by his unique expressions, his ideas, and his understandings. I think it’s needed to spread his ideas as far as possible, because every person living right now should understand at least some of his thoughts and they should be starting to act the way they are supposed to, to change this world and to end the current hot issues that are increasing in size and number day by day. Also, I’m very glad that finally I had found a person who has the same thoughts as I do; therefore, many of the issues I’m going to talk about are the ones that Havel might had mentioned before in his own speech.
- Firstly, what I consider the most important issue of all times is all the aspects of culture – religion, lifestyle, costumes, music, language, … the impacts cultures generate on human beings, the dangers which cultures are facing with, … We are living in a more globalized world than ever, and I must make at least an alarm to notify all men. A world being globalized means the integration of cultures, and no longer from now – human beings will be sharing a united culture, a culture that is the same everywhere, the uniqueness of one’s culture is being lost – this is the effect of a process called globalization when different people from different cultures are getting closer and closer to each other than ever and at the same time, they are losing their own traditions. With the current rate of globalization, we can’t do anything effectively to slow down the process – the more we try to end this problem unitedly as a group, a nation, the more we speed up the process. Therefore, there’s one way that we can do somehow to keep this process going slower, it is to maintain one’s own unique culture individually, prevent the culture from spreading out to another land, pass the original cultural harmonies to later generations, … However, there’s one real life example which is opposite to my propose for how to maintain one’s own culture while parts of the world are on their ways integrating together; that is, the formation of the European Union, or the EU, years ago. I’m not saying that the formation of the EU brings no advantages to Europe and its people economically – what I’m really concerned about is how well the EU could do to maintain each European country’s cultures as those countries are nowadays connected economically and culturally to each other. One of the leader from the Union once said, among some of the EU’s goals is to help strengthen the economies of the continent and to maintain each separated country’s culture as best as possible while most of the European countries are united into a single union. My original propose is to have every person keeping his/her own culture individually (or at least as a nation), what the EU is doing is uniting all people continentally and at the same time, separating them culturally from the controlling department of the Union. So that, in the EU’s case, they are doing this separation themselves while they are not trying to get the citizens involved. This is a difficult task for them, and their propose doesn’t seem to be working out effectively because at the time the citizens didn’t have the Union formed, they could maintain their own traditions individually under the rule of a national government – but since the time the EU was formed, the citizens are not exercising this way anymore, they let their rulers decide which way to go. This example illustrates the maintenance of the uniqueness of cultures in a united way done under the rule of a union in which I don’t recommend.
- Secondly, it seems that most of us today have forgotten the real values of our own cultures – I’m making this statement because this is happening more and more frequently due to the way our modern societies work. I personally consider the harmonies of the original cultures, in other words, the cultures of a land that haven’t been attacked or released or influenced yet, the true harmonies, or a pure harmony that makes up a pure and true culture – these original harmonies and cultures should be maintained and practiced every day. Therefore, according to my ideas that I just stated, I don’t think America has an original culture at all – the end product that American culture is today was the result of the mixing and blending of different original cultures. Different people came into contact in this land centuries earlier and they carried their cultures with them, after years of working together to create what is today modern America – they blended and mixed those cultural values and what we have today is just a mess, a mess from our ancestors. Look at the way the American society works, and compare it to others on the other continents, although not at the equal advanced, we see many differences in between, and one is about culture. Although the EU I was talking about earlier hasn’t got an effective way to maintain their citizen’s cultures separately yet, their currently integrated culture is specific and we can tell that upon the very first looks. That’s my story on American culture, now is about each people’s culture upon entering American. Like I said, the original cultural harmonies are what to be respected, it is what to be proud of; but in this case, the people are willing to give up their cultures and they are ready to absorb a new one, the mixed American culture that I just talked about. There would be nothing serious to be mentioned if those people aren’t that ready and willing to get rid of their own traditions and to absorb a new one immediately after their first steps on the New World. One typical example can be mention as Asian-Americans’ first steps on the country’s soil and what they do. So, as an alarm, I would like to notify all men about the values of being attached to a particular culture, which is a thing to be proud of, not to be given up. You have to stand up and fight for your own unique culture! Do not let it fly into another land! Do not let anyone absorbs it! Maintain it and keep it well! Pass it on to later generations!
- Thirdly, I want to talk about the artistic values of living in a modern world, which is living in this world today. As I believe (so as Havel), living a life has two opposite extremes, or aspects of a life – that is, living a life artistically or living a life scientifically. Havel emphasized on the current rate of scientific development, “Yes, everything is possible, because our civilization does not have its own unified style, its own spirit, its own aesthetic. This is related to the crisis, or to the transformation, of science as the basis of the modern conception of the world.” According to his statement, I want to come forward and state, “A world based on science also means a world based on nothing.” I am firmly sure that I would get reactions from you, as the audience who believe in the helpfulness of science; however, this world started with art, therefore, only art can continues life on Earth, the process of life can’t continue with the development of science (which is developing at a shocking rate nowadays) – we must keep this rate constant, not higher which we can’t control, as a tool to help us move through life, not as a tool to make us move through life. Science changes the way we view nature, it changes the way we view our societies, it changes the way we view our own lives, it changes the way we view and think about ourselves as well as about each other, it changes the way we understand matters and look at objects. We, as human beings, are living our lives artistically (we should!) full with the values of art – if we couldn’t control the rate of scientific developments, our societies would be torn upside-down and the result is a mess, sciences would control our world at that time, not us (as supposed) anymore. This concept of life between science and art hasn’t been exposed much to the public, and it remains quite an abstract idea which can only be realized and understood by a few. The problem is that, most people are seeing the impacts science leaves on this world without realizing about the gap between science and real values of life (which I’m calling art), leaving a whole misunderstanding about the role of science and art during the course of life. I agree that science contributes much to our lives; however, if we try to make the most of it – we would be destroying our own lives and ourselves. What have we done so far that makes our world on its way to advance into a more-modernized one and that we’re going to be overthrown by robots? Let me list a few scientific things: the production of nuclear weapons (this is going to weep out all traces of human once it is used), the studying and experimenting in different branches of science (Genes and DNA are being studied biologically to improve the chance of getting a “perfect” child once he/she is born with the desired traits set out by the parents, the process of cloning animals may soon be applied on human, …), the production of modern machines that are used to replace human actions in the environment may soon overpass human’s capacity, …
- Due to the limitation of the amount of time given, I would like to close my speech today with one of my favorite quotation from Václav Havel, it is “It logically follows that, in today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinions, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies …”. Our world is changing, so as us – we are adapting to our world every second it’s changing; but to be successful in the future, we should not just continue the process of adaptation, as Havel said – we must go back to the roots of our cultures (which is the most important aspect I always want to emphasize about) and find out the true harmonies that lie there, then we continue advancing from that origin onward. Fate decides when this world would end based on when we start acting differently from now, only us are the ones who are taking care of our world right now and it is our responsibility to do so. We must stand up and fight for ourselves, we should not let the course of life rule and fool us around, we are human beings and we are only the ones capable of ruling this world, we must fight for changes – this world must be changed if we want to have the lives we’ve been long desired for. Finally, as human beings – we are capable to do everything, we are on this world to do anything, so why aren’t we making a revolution to change our world? Believe in ourselves. And the warmest thanks to you for being here and listening to my speech, warmest regards to all of you, thank you very much!
About the Author
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