On Culture

 For my first Sociology and Anthropology class paper we had to write about our culture and what makes it unique, as well as what goes into the concept of culture. Since disability and the like are very much a part of my own unique world and its culture, it is mentioned a bit (more like quite a lot) in my paper, and I thought I might as well share it here, and see what you all think. As always, comments on any of my posts (disability from personal experience or through creative writing) is greatly appreciated and makes my day. 

   Culture can be defined as dynamic shared patterns of norms, beliefs and symbols. Throughout the world and its history, many different cultures have developed. Each individual throughout their life develops their own culture and group of beliefs and practices. My culture and my family's culture is really a mixture of many different cultures and their beliefs from a mix of ethnicities.  For a bit of context; my immediate family is made up of two ethnicities mainly, and within those, three different cultures. Those ethnicities are Anglosaxan, to be specific English and Irish, and Ashkenazi Jewish, in particular Austrian-Hungarian, possibly with some Polish and Czech on that side as well.

My father is a first generation American, born to a former British Royal Pay Corp Officer, who lived through both world wars after being born in 1909. My grandfather had his house bombed during  World War Two. My grandmother was a Vienese Holocaust survivor who fled her home by herself at 19 to Jerusalem.

 Born to a well to do Jewish family in Vienna, where her father was the head of the Austrian Wine Company, my grandmother was the second of three children.She had an older brother, Heinz, and a younger brother, Eric. During the 1930’s my grandmother was sent by train that was turned around while trying to cross the Hungarian border. She was then successfully sent by boat to what was then British Mandated Palestine, during the six week journey someone stole her only coat. My grandmother got so sick on the boat trip that took three weeks longer than expected, that when she arrived in Jerusalem, the lady she was staying with thought she was a frail old woman until she gave her a bath and realized that she was only nineteen years old. Heinz later met up with her there as he had left first, while Eric went by kindertrain to a Kibbutz. The three children did not see their parents or step mother for ten years, as the adults had fled to the United Kingdom.

 While in British Mandated Palestine my grandmother met my grandfather who was an officer in the British Royal Pay Corp, stationed in the Middle East, they later went to London. Heinz stayed behind with his family in Israel, and his son still lives there. Later on, the rest of the Austrian side of the family moved from the United Kingdom to the United States and settled in Massachusetts. Some extended family also settled in Canada. The exception being a great great uncle, Erwin, who after being ratted out by a neighbor was sent to the concentration camp Auschwitz. He later escaped having been granted a weekend pass out of Auschwitz, and took the opportunity to flee. He fled to China, with his wife and mother, with the help of Presbetaryian missionaries, and worked as a doctor in a hospital outside of Shanghai. He was one of the last western doctors in the Shanghai area hospital where he worked when the communists came. He then briefly returned to Vienna, and then eventually came to New York and New Mexico before finally settling in Michigan.

  My mother's family, by contrast, has been in the United States for at least a few generations, are Irish Catholic, and have deep roots within the city of Salem, MA. The city where my mother, her siblings, and their parents all grew up. There is even a distant relation to John Trumbull, the first governor of Connecticut under both British and American leadership. For both sides of the family, heritage and family history are very important and stories are passed down from generation to generation, particularly on my father's side. The belief that Israel has the right to exist as much as any other country, and Zionism in general, is another very important belief on that side, as the entire family would have been annihilated had they not fled to what is now Israel, and the United Kingdom, and I would not be writing this paper.  

Culture also includes a person's values that they and people around them harbor. In my family, education and more specifically  the education of the whole person is a key important value. As well as the fact that intelligence comes in many different forms. My grandfather for example was unable to finish university at The University of London, but was awarded a prestigious award in music theory and was highly intelligent, able to solve a rubix cube with mathematics, and worked on some of the first computer programs at John Hancock that were still in use after he retired.

Since  I was born extremely prematurely  much of my early childhood memories are taken up with early intervention services and therapies of various sorts, mainly physical therapy as a preschooler, and occupational therapy during my elementary school years. In both cases, I had very nice, respectful, and understanding therapists; who were willing and eager to adapt things so I could succeed. I have been in the special education system since the day I turned 3 years old and was eligible for an Individualized Education Program, also known as an IEP. Before that, I received services through Early Intervention.

During my time in primary and secondary school I encountered a mix of teachers all with various ideas about education. For the most part, many teachers were willing to accommodate my needs and make the needed changes so I could access education in a fulfilling way that educated not only the intellectual needs but also the other functional skills I would need in life. Other teachers though, had a very cookie-cutter approach to education, that one size fits all, neurotypical or not, and that was that. Those teachers ended up with a sit down from whoever was my special educator at the time with a thorough read through of my IEP and all of its various components, accommodations, and if applicable, modifications.

Self advocacy with diplomacy was a major skill I learned when dealing with such teachers, my special educator and parents being the major socializing factors, as they have always encouraged me to speak up when something is not right, and to use my skills with self advocacy to politely demand changes when needed. I also learned self advocacy during interactions with my medical team, which is a vast group stretching out over three separate hospitals, with many subspecialities. My core group of doctors consider me to be the “real” head of the team, while one doctor is the officially labeled head of team, they allow me, and even encourage me, to have a very involved role in decisions about my healthcare, even to the point of helping with research about my own conditions, which was something I did last summer. The research was then submitted to the National Institute of Health’s rare and undiagnosed disease center. It was also sent by my head of team to doctors and medical centers around the world for opinions and to ask for insight about what could be the cause of my variety of complicated symptoms.

Aside from education a major value to my family is to be exposed to diversity and many different types of people. My parents deal in antique oriental carpets, with the rug market being centered in New York City. They have been taking my brother and I to the city with them on business trips since we were very young, we essentially grew up playing, or napping, on the large piles of carpets, going for dinner with other dealers and clients, and getting to know the people around the market, many of whom have very interesting stories.

 In particular, there is one office that has a few different dealers and their helpers in it after they lost their old building and offices in the 2008 recession. The office in New York City is likely the most diverse place one could visit. The owner, Yosef and his cousin Abraham are Mashedi Jews, or Jews from the Iranian city of Mashed, though the family fled to Israel when Yosef was a baby. Yosef and Abraham, and Yosef's son, Rohni, who used to work with him before going into the jewelry business are all Orthodox Jewish. Additionally in the office you can find Nader, who is Bahai, his sister in fact teaches in the nursing department at Lake Forest College. There is also Rahim, who is Muslim, and is in charge of cleaning and rug repairs, he has a group of South American women who are Catholic, and a Tibettian or Nepalese woman who help him with the repair, as well as various helpers to move the rugs, many who are either Middle Eastern or Sorth African. There are also of course, the other dealers and customers who come in and out of the office, further diversifying the mix. We like to joke that it is one of the most diverse places you will likely ever go to, and diversity is a very important value to us, as it helps expose you to the broader world and the many different customs, values, and beliefs of other cultures.  

Growing up going to antiques shows and the Art and Antiques Dealers League dinners we learned how to behave and what was expected of us for social norms when out in public. My brother and I were oftentimes the youngest children at the League dinners, and other events. Norms can be defined as the social expectations of acceptable behavior we should do. Unlike many children who may grow up going to child friendly restaurants only, and behaving without any regard for politeness or having meltdowns when required to sit still and behave, my brother and I were socialized by our parents at fancy restaurants from a very early age, and thus we learned to behave as such. Politeness is an important social norm that allowed us to go to events and places that most children would not be taken to.

Another social norm that goes hand in hand with politeness is cleanliness. As a result of intergenerational trauma, the children of Holocaust survivors, and the survivors themselves, as well as the grandchildren of the survivors, often exhibit traits of hyper-vigilence and extreme cleanliness. In my family, we poke fun at ourselves and jokingly refer to it as “the mr. clean gene”, as it is a trait, along with punctuality, that has been passed down through the generations. In fact, there is a picture of my great grandfather with my grandmother, my great aunt and uncle, and a few others at a picnic after they immigrated to the United States. He is wearing a starched white shirt, and would notoriously get very upset if there was even a wrinkle in it.

This trait goes hand in hand with the need for cleanliness and devotion to a germ free environment after my birth, especially because I was born at the end of RSV season, a virus that can be potentially fatal to infants, especially premature ones. My primary care physician told my mother that anyone who comes into our home after I was brought home from the hospital after spending the first four months of my life in the neonatal intensive care unit and the special care nursery step down unit, that everyone must immediately go to the bathroom and wash their hands. While I am now at less risk of getting sick, that norm has been ingrained within our routine and continues nonetheless. If you enter our house, first you take your shoes off, then you go and wash your hands for at least twenty seconds with soap and water, though with the coronavirus pandemic we have obviously not been having any visitors the past six months.

We often follow social norms in an effort to fit in with society and be respected by our various peers. When we are with different types of people our behavior changes accordingly to the type of people we are with. A person behaves very differently with their close best friends than they do with their parents or a group of strangers, this is called role fulfillment. Norms can either be social or official and written into law. Sometimes people collectively ignore the law because of social norms, for example: speeding. Social norms can be incredibly powerful in that sense.  Norms can be confining in their limitations of what is “normal” or “right”, but can also be very helpful, if not freeing, in their ability to help people navigate society, especially a society that may be complex or confusing. By following social norms we are able to understand our place in society and the larger world we live in.

Additionally we use social imagination; the ability to see the relationship between one's individual thoughts or life and the broader society when thinking about culture. We are able to make connections between our own experiences and the shared experiences of others within our culture, while also acknowledging the differences in those experiences. We avoid imagining ourselves as isolated individuals and think critically about our place in the broader world.

To conclude, culture is a group of dynamic shared patterns that include norms to help us navigate and understand the world, common beliefs that are shared by those within our unique culture, and symbols that are important to our culture. Different cultures have their own sets of values and beliefs. Many cultures intersect at different points, though they may be otherwise quite different to each other.