Cultured?

I spent the years from 14 to mid-40's avidly espousing my supposed Scottish heritage (25% of my genetics, if that), playing bagpipes, dressing up and parading around. I remember the almost erotic excitement that people would often display when they first happened on a group of us pipers all kilted up--they would babble on about their Scottish ancestry, where their grandparents came from, etc. The desire to belong is very powerful. Of course those of us in possession of the magic spell, the ones piping and dancing as if they were born doing it--we could look down on the newcomers with a mixture of paternalism and mild disdain. We possessed the True Culture, we were SO HOT!!

All of us are taught to revere culture--both in the meaning of "high culture" like symphonies and in the meaning of "ethnic culture" like what do you do at holidays and what language your grandparents spoke. Ethnicity is our identity and our aspiration. Eating your great-grandmother's plum pudding at Christmas makes you feel all warm and fuzzy and not just from the booze in it. So how far back are you comfortable going? That plum pudding is nice, but it's pretty much just the other day. Go back along the chain of your mitochondrial DNA to your 100X great grandmother--what did she cook? Would you like it or recognize it? How about 1000X great--what did she fix for the tribe? Did she even cook? Let's have raw bloody antelope for the holidays! Where were the people of your ethnic group 10000 generations ago? Were they mammals? Probably not . . .

Going beyond culture is a major part of enlightenment. Or if you don't like the word "Enlightenment" substitute "Heaven". How can you get into heaven if you are still looking down at beings who don't eat the same food as you do at Christmas? How can you be enlightened if you even feel Christmas is a great big deal? And this is more than just toleration and fellowship with all the wonderful rainbow people of the world. Rainbow people make me ill (got to get over that . . .) Start practicing fellowship with snails. Not ants--that's too easy, they bustle around in tribes like humans. Brother Flatworm needs a Christmas card this year.

Biologists have poked and prodded poor flatworms a lot. They are easy to study, being so simple-minded. Basically they seek food and sex and avoid unpleasant stimuli so they act just like humans. Can you get your mind into a compact enough place to imagine what being a flatworm is like? It shouldn't be too hard if you focus on your basic deep desires (food and sex). So what would a flatworm have to do to become enlightened, to move up a notch in the next rebirth--or to become an instant Flatworm Buddha? You, clinging tightly to your highbrow culture, might look down on those lower life forms and inner city residents who don't know classical music. If Brother Flatworm could meditate and transcend, he/she (they are hermaphroditic) might be able to imagine or understand or feel (not hear--they have no ears) one note, or even one sound. That would be enlightenment for a flatworm. So what must you do? You could start by leaving behind all the quirks you have learned that you think make you are You. It's OK to still savor your grandmother's borscht, but don't feel smug about it. Beets and their ancestors have been growing in the sun and then passing through the gut and being defecated out by your ancestors for millions of years. What makes your grandmother's mashed beet concoction so special? What do you think makes you so special for eating it?