Stay in Your Lane: A Culture Story
“Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”-Ceasar Chavez. The words spoken from the great Ceasar Chavez have much more relevance to our modern era than one would realize. In a time where various cultures and beliefs are still being used as weapons in an utterly meaningless war, the concept of pushing one culture to replace another is still one that many countries in our world believe today. The thought that one’s culture is above another group of peoples, is simply barbaric. We are being taught that the only way for us to believe and support our own culture is to put down or disregard the cultures of others. In an era where we as members of a free country try to pride ourselves on cultural and racial progressiveness still have an issue with want to change the cultures of those around us, thus creating the reality and appearance that is cultural intolerance.
The study and analyzing of this process of “helping and fixing” others comes from and is constructed by Rachel Naomi Remen, Remen is an author and teacher on the topic of alternative medicine. She is also a professor of Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Remen is also the author of Helping, Fixing or Serving? a powerful literary piece on the concept of cultural awareness and the various ways of seeing life. “Helping, fixing and serving to represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as a whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul”. (Remen 1) Remen views this concept of “helping and fixing” in a different light, a light that many are sadly blind to. Remen speaks about the other side of the spectrum of how other cultures will and do interpret this “help ing and fixing” of their people, thus making the members of the other cultures feel ostracized and as if they are something “other.” Remen’s work can be complemented by the writing of one, Ivan Illich. Ivan Illich, was a Croatian-Austrian philosopher, priest, and polemical critic of the institutions of Western culture, he also addressed contemporary practices in education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development. Illich is also the author of the powerful reading To Hell With Good Intentions, in the reading, Illich touches up on the thought that we should not try and change others way of life, meaning this cultures. He spoke of the belief that if you do to other countries and try and “fix” their way of life, that you are implying that there is something wrong with how different people chose to live their lives, which is extremely contradictory to the way of life that we as a nation constantly preach. “I do have deep faith in the enormous good will of the U.S. volunteer. However, his good faith can usually be explained only by an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy. By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class “American Way of Life,” since that is really the only life you know.”(Illich 2) Illich is further enchanting is the argument about why American’s should not come to Mexico to “help” them. We as American’s are already imbedded with information about so many places that we believe that nearly very country that is not our own is in dire need of our help, when in reality that is not the case at all. We as a country cannot believe the social and negative propaganda about various countries because all that will do is make us blind to the fact that these countries may not necessarily have something severely wrong with them and that we are just trying to push our values onto them, making them feel less significant.
Throughout my experience at my community partner, I have taken on one main role and that role is to be a role model for the very students I am there to help. Upon my arrival at my first day of service at my community partner, I was only given a little bit of instruction, meaning that the teachers wanted to see what I could really bring to the table so to speak, testing me almost to see if I would take the initiative to actually want to make a difference for the students. I do not really see myself as a helper or a fixer. I do not believe that there is anything wrong with the students, they are very well taught and do not necessarily need my help, and the thought that I would be “fixing” the students would imply that they are broken, when in fact, they are not. The reason I see myself as a role model is because it was not that long ago that I was in their shoes, just a ball of untapped potential waiting for a direction to be released to. I am there for the students should they need to ask me anything about life in high school or even college. They tend to want to learn about me as a person and even as a student. I do not push any of my beliefs onto the students but merely let them know that I was once in their place and had to make tough decisions in order to be where I am today. I tell them the story of my life as a middle school and high school student, and how it was not particularly glamorous when it came to my academics. I let the students know that the teachers around them are on their side and that they want them to succeed. I do not push the students to want to pursue any path, but rather let them know that they have the ability to succeed with any path they set their minds to. The work of Remen is what I view as a support for my work at my community partner, “Serving makes us aware of our wholeness and its power. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals: our service strengthens us as well as others. Fixing and helping are draining, and over time we may burn out, but service is renewing.”(Remen 1) Remen’s words are able to pertain to my specific views on my role at my community partner and how I feel my service is being utilized.
Remen and Illich are not the only two powerful contributors to the topic of “helping and fixing” among cultures in our world. Jose Z. Calderon, a professor Emeritus of Sociology and Chicano Studies at Pitzer College is also the author of the reading Perspective-Taking as a Tool for Building Democratic Societies, speaks a lot about the culture of the hispanic people and how the concept of “helping and fixing” cultures is viewed on the other side. Calderon writes about the importance of being able to express one’s own experience as well as understand the experiences of the “other” throughout his reading. He is able to give the reader a brand new perspective on what it means to be a victim of cultural “othering” and why the thought of “helping and fixing” cultures is egregious. In terms of insights of members at my community partner, I would say that the students at my community partner have a strong insight to the possible futures that they can obtain, one through hard work and one through the lack of hard work. In a world where most of these students are predisposed to certain roles in life, based upon their race, the school in which they attend teachings them to look beyond social boundaries and cultural stereotypes. I have taught the students about my own experiences and how I was able to break away from the life that I thought would be predestined for me, I talk to the students about how I found my own path for something greater and that they should too. Calderon speaks in great detail on the topic of perspectives amongst culture, “Ultimately, perspective-taking cannot occur without addressing questions of power. But academia can follow emerging trends and break down structures that separate it from the larger community.” (Calderon 3) Calderon is able to teach me about perspective through his reading, thus making me a better member at my community partner. The perspectives of the students at my community partner may differ from my own because of the fact that my schooling may have been different from theirs, but I am a firm believer of the saying, that “It doesn’t matter where you start, it only matters where you finish.” Meaning that these students should not feel as though they only have a path chosen for them in life already, they create their own path and can surpass the cultural barriers that society and the media have set before them. The thought that one culture is greater than another is heinous and should not be a way of thinking. In a society where we pride ourselves on our cultural progressiveness, we should not have the mentality that other countries need or want our help because we believe that they are helpless. No one culture is more significant than another regardless of size, wealth, or differences.
