I detect a wry note from American commentators talking about the European debt crisis. After being sneered at by “sophisticated” Europeans during our housing bubble and Bush economic collapse, now we see the Blahnicks on the other foot - and we’re loving it.
The crisis of the decade-old Euro was inevitable, due to compromises made to achieve agreement among the founding countries. The crisis is also rooted in national stereotypes. My daughter Julia lives in a Greek area of Queens, New York. Her 60-year-old hair stylist Tina grew up in Athens, and she summaries the Greek point of view succinctly:
“Greece, to Europe, is like a child without a birth certificate.”
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| Geese Discussing the Euro (Photo by Jan) |
This description renders victim and victimizer in one phrase. Julia reports that anger in her neighborhood is largely pointed at Germany, cast as it often is, as the greedy heavy. Raised by post-Holocaust Jews, I’m a fellow traveler in this prejudice.
Before I get to the subject of Greek debt and cultural memory, I want to summarize what I’ve been able to learn about the Euro-crisis:
- The wealthy countries were accurately cast as greedy and callous.
- The poorer countries were accurately portrayed as profligate spendthrifts.
- While it’s fair to say that Greece has been temporarily bailed out, it’s equally true that the bailout is really a structured default designed to benefit Germany and the other donor countries, not Greece.
- It’s also accurate to say that US shadenfreude is misplaced, since our debilitated economy is intertwined with Europe’s: if they fail, so will we.
The attention being given to the messy Euro-squabble, instead of the usual image of elegant, sophisticated cooperation, shows the power of cultural memory over history. My son Sammy has been talking with me about cultural memory, a term from archeology attributed – you can’t make this stuff up – to a German named Assman. Cultural memory is the remembrance passed on through generations. It enables the transmission of culture directly through families and communities, instead of via history. Specialists create history; it’s the conversion of memory into a structured version of events.
At its worst, cultural memory creates prejudice and hatred. The horrific series of wars in the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia, long predicted, were based partly on 500-year-old cultural memories. My upbringing in the immediate aftermath of the holocaust focused on the suffering of the Jews and the monstrosity of the Germans. A lot of cultural memory is more benign, allowing us to pass on traditions and rituals that create a deep connection to a chain of people stretching into the future from the past. We locate ourselves in the story of our people, and it feels good.
The positive and negative possibilities of cultural memory are reflected in ethnic humor. When I lived in Laos I learned a bit of their extensive library of ethnic aspersions, some based on the rich possibilities of puns in a tonal language. Dung beetles that roll little balls of water buffalo poop around, were called “Cambodians” by smiling Laotians. By changing an inflection, the phrase “Thai silk” became “Thai pubic hair.” A phrase that sounds wonderful in Laotian, applied to people like me, translates as “watermelon-nosed foreigner.” The Laotians reserved some of the most colorful ethnic humor to describe themselves, using language I can’t repeat here.
Sam’s perceptive questions about cultural memory and the spectacle in the Euro Zone point us towards a pivotal human tension between unity and diversity. The Euro crisis brings to mind what I’ve learned from a friend who’s a leader in the movement towards a single global currency seeking to address the exploitation built into today’s diverse fiscal system. And the shattered unity of Yugoslavia produced not diversity but unimaginable suffering.
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| Sheepscot Diversity (Photo By Jan) |
The natural world teaches us that diversity equates with resilience and new growth. Monocultures lead to vulnerability, producing catastrophes like the Irish potato famine. The core of our being is our DNA, which is an astonishing system for reliably creating a single person from two diverse biologies.
Using the blunt instruments of cultural memory – fear and propaganda – the Republican candidates play to prejudices that mobilize people. Then they’re faced with the contradictory task of appealing to a much wider group in the general election. They stumble around paying great sums to consultants to help them voice bigotry and appeals to consensus out of both sides of their mouths.
Many of us swim in an ocean of cyber information that magnifies the problem of maintaining functional unity while preserving diversity. I read many blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook postings. The overwhelming majority reflects my values and politics. I never watch Fox News and rarely scan conservative bastions like the Wall Street Journal or The Economist. So my predispositions are reinforced more than they’re challenged.
I think we can learn from the European’s struggle to achieve modern functional unity in a framework of ancient cultural diversity. The Euro can be exploited like any currency, whether it’s a mess of national monetary systems or a single regional currency like the Euro. In either case, those with greater power will be tempted to dominate weaker players, and the victims of this exploitation will harbor grudges that can and will be passed on through the generations.
In the long run, I feel more secure in the creative, sustaining power of diversity rather than the potential equity and security offered by unity. While so many problems are created by our differences, the best solutions also arise out of divergent thinking and an embrace of our own rich heritage. The Greek drachma won’t reappear any time soon, but since both the rich countries and the poor ones of the Euro Zone are deeply unhappy with their unified currency, I think we’re going to see a steady stream of changes that better reflect the region’s mixture of cultures and histories. The Euro will only survive to the extent that it respects and supports the disparate cultures that are spending it.
