Meditation: Listen for the constant change.

Listen for the constant change. 

It is easy for us to hear the bell ring when it is hit and we notice the bell go silent.  But in between, the bell is constantly changing.  Listen for the constant change.  

This is like our everyday life.  It is constantly changing.  Every moment is different.  If you are having a rough day, week or semester, the next moment is different.  Let yourself be born anew in this present moment. 

From The Marginalian, Maria Popover writes,

In the opening pages of her 1993 masterwork Parable of the Sower (public library) — the first part of her oracular Earthseed allegory — Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) writes:

All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God

Is Change.

And from Tiny Buddha:

 

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” ~ Hal Borland

From the Joy Within:

From Charlotte Bell at Hugger Mugger:

I have the great privilege of teaching a mindfulness class each week for Huntsman Cancer Institute. The class takes place at Salt Lake City’s gorgeous Red Butte Garden. I recently bought a new 85mm macro lens for my Nikon d7500. Red Butte Garden is the perfect place to play with the lens after class. I love the elaborate detail that emerges when I shoot things close up. Sometimes when a particular plant really shines through my lens, I think about different ways I might approach it the following week. Then the next week rolls around and often that flower is gone, only to be replaced by some other gorgeous bloom. Going to the garden is a weekly reminder of the truth of constant change.

A group of meditation teachers once asked Suzuki Roshi, author of the mindfulness classic, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, to sum up meditation in one sentence. His answer: “Everything changes.” It’s easy to see the truth of constant change in our lives. We can observe the evolution of our bodies throughout our lives. We can reflect on changes in our preferences and habits. What I enjoyed in my 20s is vastly different from what I enjoy now. Sometimes the cycles of constant change can be challenging. It can be hard to let go of things we love. At other times, we welcome change.
CONSTANT CHANGE IS NOT A CHOICE

The changes that characterize our lives are often beyond our control. For example, we can’t stop the aging process. Relationships change, often without our input. Friends, family and animal companions come and go. We can’t stop these changes from happening. But we can choose how we respond. We can choose whether or not constant change throws us off balance—which it most certainly will at times. Or we can remember that the difficulties we experience in response to change will themselves change at some point.

When we’re happy with the conditions in our lives, we often wish they wouldn’t change. When they inevitably do change, we suffer. Have you ever taken a vacation and wished it would never end? Wanting your situation to be different keeps you from enjoying where you are.

When we’re not so happy with what’s happening in our lives, we respond with aversion. Have you ever gotten angry at being stopped by a stoplight? Have you ever sat in your car, stewing about it until the light changes? This is how we add unnecessary suffering onto a basically neutral situation. It may not be our preference to have to stop, but is it worth getting worked up?

These responses are natural, but they can sometimes layer even more angst onto the situation. Our choice then becomes whether we react with clinging or aversion, or whether we recognize that our present situation is temporary and relax into it as much as possible.

The situations I cited above are relatively easy. Of course, there are pleasant and unpleasant situations that are much more challenging in our lives. But we can practice moderating our responses in these less challenging times, so that when bigger challenges arise, perhaps we can respond more skillfully. That’s what practice is about.
HOW MINDFULNESS HELPS US TUNE IN TO CHANGE

We can also practice moderating our responses in meditation. In the same way my macro lens reveals tiny details in the flowers I shoot, mindfulness gives us an intimate look at constant change.

Try this: Place your hands together. You can interlace your fingers, place your hands in Anjali Mudraor touch your fingertips together—whatever you prefer. Now tune into the sensations in the hands. What do you feel? Maybe there are sensations of warmth, coolness, pressure, pulsing or vibration, or something else entirely. Do these sensations stay constant, or do they continuously change? Practice this inquiry for at least 3 to 5 minutes.

When we look closely at what appears to be constant contact between our hands, we can begin to see that the sensations are actually constantly changing. Contact between our hands is not just one thing; it’s a panoply of changing sensations.

This is a microscopic look into what is happening all the time in our lives. In mindfulness practice, we can observe sensations coming and going at very subtle levels. Eventually, we become less reactive as we become more comfortable with the inevitability of change. When we practice mindfulness, we rest in the flow of constant change in our bodies. It becomes familiar enough that we no longer see change as a problem, but rather simply as the natural state of our lives.

Practicing mindfulness is kind of like a musician practicing scales. You practice scales and arpeggios so that you develop facility with combinations of notes that you will likely encounter when you play music. When we learn to rest in the flow of constant change, we become better able to respond skillfully to the bigger changes we experience every day of our lives.

From Maria Popova about James Baldwin:

Baldwin reflects on the stubborn light that must have blazed in his own parents’ eyes in order for them to survive what they survived, in order for him to exist, and adds:

This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.

[…]

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

2.03 Culture

Please review:  Levine, Robert and Wolff, Ellen.  Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture.  Psychology Today. 1985.          

Today's Lesson:  

Culture

How to examine it? 

culture shock  

ethnocentrism  

cultural relativity

What is it made up of? 

material 

nonmaterial 

norms 

 folkways

 mores 

taboos

language 

As we learned in our last lesson, humans are born to be nurtured.  We are social beings born into communities of other people.  Macro-communities (larger than face-to-face) of people who share meaning in everyday life form a culture.  So as babies, we are born into a culture.  Because culture is so omnipresent, it surrounds us before we are even born.  And so, similar to how a fish has never known what it is like to live out of water, humans have been surrounded by culture their whole lives.  Thus, culture is the first force of socialization, or nurture, that we are influenced by.

Culture as a fishbowl

Google Form for this Lesson

1.  What's the difference between material and non-material culture?

2.  How is a fishbowl a metaphor for culture?

The Sociological Imagination and Social Construction of Culture

The documentary Babies (2010) follows four babies in different cultures from before birth through their first year of development.  You can watch the trailer here or by clicking below.  And this post has more about the film.

In the fishbowl metaphor, the baby is born into the bowl surrounded by both material and nonmaterial culture.

Culture Shock

Because we are so ingrained in culture, when we experience a different culture, it can affect us emotionally. When we are exposed to a culture we have not lived in, we can experience culture shock.  In the example of the fishbowl, imagine bringing a fish home from a carnival or a pet store.  When you dump the fish into the new bowl, it might be a shock - imagine how you feel when jumping into a cold swimming pool. 

One example of culture shock from my life was discovering the Japanese toilet.  At first, the experience can be a culture shock as the traditional Japanese toilet is very different from ours:

In the case of the Japanese toilet, not only does it look and function differently from ours, but it also represents fundamentally different non-material culture. The Japanese are very germ conscious and they try hard not to spread germs. They also do not have a lot of furniture - they do not sit on furniture in their houses so why would they sit on a porcelain throne in a bathroom? And finally, they are used to sitting and squatting in positions difficult for westerners.

What is the shared meaning behind the Japanese toilet?
Materially: what is it?

Non-materially: How to use it? Why use it? 

The Japanese do have a "Western style" toilet that is more like the toilet that Americans are used to, however, it still represents differences in both - its material and non-material culture.

In either case, the point is that there is nothing "natural" about culture. In other words, there are no weird ways of doing things that come quite natural to us. There are only different ways of doing things. And material culture, although physically different, often represents a different non-material culture, such as a different way of thinking about the world.

Ethnocentrism

If we are not in shock about the cultural difference, sometimes we judge other cultures by our own standards. This is called ethnocentrism.  For example, an American might travel to another culture and think, "Why would they want to squat to use the toilet?  Isn't that uncomfortable?  They should use a toilet the way we do - it's much better because it's more comfortable."  That would be ethnocentric.  In the fishbowl metaphor ethnocentrism is a person outside of the bowl looking in and judging the fish.  "Why doesn't the fish go in the castle?  That's what a castle is for."

Cultural Relativity
Instead of judging other cultures, sociologists seek cultural relativity or trying to understand a culture from that culture's own standards.  This will help us to understand people better and be more empirical and less judgemental.  Below is a graphic image called the Iceberg of Culture, originally printed in a 1984 American Foreign Service Handbook (cited by sociologist Robin DiAngelo, 2016 and digitally designed by Dr. Robert Sweetland on his website for educators.)  

Cultural Universals and Human Nature

Although the first glance of a new culture might lead us to an emotional response like culture shock or ethnocentrism, when sociologists (and anthropologists) take a step back, they find many general aspects of culture are similar around the world.  These similar cultural traits are called cultural universals.  Many of the components of the iceberg above can generally be considered cultural universals even though the expression of those universals are different.  Because culture universals are ubiquitous among humans, they might be considered innate, or part of our human nature.  Many of these relate to the interaction between humans.  It is in our human nature to be nurtured.  We need others to survive so we are wired to connect with other people.

3.  When engaging in cross-cultural study, what should we be mindful of?  

4.  Instead, how should we approach culture?  

Cultural Differences and Human Nurture

Although cultural universals might be similar to humans around the world, the specific way we express these universals might be different.  These differences begin even before birth as the cultural norms of one group of people affect the expecting mother (and her baby).  This results in different influences on us based on our culture. And that difference continues throughout our lives as we learn the  shared meanings of our culture.  For example, what does it mean to bath or "be clean"? To eat or have "food"?  To get ready to go out or wear "clothes"?  All of these have different meanings based on your culture, so individuals are nurtured differently depending on their culture.

Levine and Wolff published an article about different ways that social scientists researched time in various cultures.  See the article called Social Time here.

 Using the article, please answer these questions:

5. How did the author conduct cross-cultural research about time in the U.S. and Brazil?
6. What did he find quantitatively and qualitatively?
7. What does the social construction of the shared meaning of being "late" reveal?
8.  What other data did researchers use to study time around the world?

What are norms?

Norms are the shared expectations about behavior - the meaning applied to how we interact with a group of people.  Norms vary around the world.  One example of this is the norms centered around time, as in the article you read for homework.  How do people from different cultures think about time differently? What do they consider late or early?  These are norms. 

Why are norms important? 

There are two important general lessons from norms:

• When interacting with other cultures, recognizing norms is important because if we fail to acknowledge these differences, we run the risk of offending someone or even a whole culture of people.
• Second, norms help us see that we have been shaped to behave a certain way;  they are an illustration that we are socialized by our nurture.  Norms an example of the shared meaning that we learn as we grow up.  

And this graphic explains varying norms from around the world for business travelers:

Also for more humor on cultural differences, checkout these HSBC adds: personal space, wrong flower

Norms that are less important are called folkways. Folkways are not crucial to the order of society and if you were to violate a folkway people would not necessarily judge you.  A folkway in the United States might be addressing adults by "Mr" or "Ms" or driving the speed limit.  A folkway at a dinner party might be not putting your elbows on the table.  

Mores (pronounce mor AYS) are norms important to the order of a society. If you violate them, it will cause a disruption in the social setting.  It is worth noting that these mores, although very important to the society, are not necessarily laws. Similar to the ideas of time being a social construct, they are just the way that people operate and even though they are not written into laws, they are important to the function of society.  The more of how to cross a street can be found in lots of videos on youtube.   Watch this video of an intersection in India and think about who has the right of way? There may not be a law about it, but those drivers know what they are doing.  Would an American know the more of how to cross the street?  Note how the person crossing the street is aware of the norms of traffic and so the pedestrian successfully crosses without getting hit.

When I was in Italy, it took me six days to figure out how to cross the street. There were scooters and cars swerving everywhere and honking. Every time I tried to cross the street, cars would screech to a stop and swear at me in Italian. Then I figured out how to do it.   Just walk a steady pace across the street and let them avoid you - and it worked!  This knowledge of how to cross the street is an important norm, what sociologists call a more.  

Here is an intersection in Rome.

Crossing a street in Rome.

Here's advice on how to do it.

And a British explanation of Italian street crossing norms here.

Crossing the Road in Vietnam Here.

Another example of being shaped by place and crossing the street is when I was in London. I was almost hit by a car because I looked the wrong way on a street! Luckily, officials in London have a sociological imagination because they painted the street for Charlies like me:

Finally, the most serious norms are taboos.  Taboos are things that you do not even want to think about because it is embarrassing to even imagine it.  For example, look at this port-a-potty created by an artist in Switzerland.  Would you be able to use it?

This is how it looks from the inside:

Would you be able to use a toilet if it looked like everyone could see you, even though you knew they could not?  This is a taboo because even though people could not see us, the mere thought of them seeing us would make us hesitant. In other words, simply thinking about doing this is embarrassing and so we don't want to even think about it.  Perhaps, that is why we have so many euphemisms for using the toilet: using the john, the restroom, the bathroom, the lavatory, the men's room, washroom, powder room?

Example of folkways, mores and taboos from a dinner date with significant other.

Example of norms from your life
9. Have you experienced a different set of norms from another culture either by traveling somewhere or by meeting a foreigner here in America? What was it like? Were there misunderstandings?
Something else that you might want to inquire about is another culture's norms;  where you would like to travel?  What are all of the norms you should know if you travel there?  Find out what unique norms exist in their culture. Here is a link to cultural etiquette around the world:

What are norms in general?  How do the norms of folkways, mores and taboos differ?

2.02 God Grew Tired of Us

Please read for THU:  Levine, Robert and Wolff, Ellen.  Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture.  Psychology Today. 1985.          

Today's lesson:  An ethnography of refugees; studying others to learn about ourselves.

In order to better understand the culture that we live in, sometimes it is easier to examine those in a different culture to find revelations about our own culture.  Like the fishbowl metaphor, if the fishbowl is our culture, we are like the fish swimming in it.  That makes it very difficult to notice the water.  So, to help us become more sociologically mindful about the ways that our own culture influences us, let us examine refugees who are from a completely different culture.  To do this, we will watch the documentary "God Grew Tired of Us."  Here is a trailer for the documentary.

This documentary is an ethnography of sorts where you get to follow Sudanese refugees to examine all the ways that they have to adjust to American culture.  Pay special attention to the values that are so difficult to adjust to.

When I was in undergrad here at Loyola, I took Sociology 125 where we got to meet with Lost Boys and hear about their struggle.   Here is a website dedicated to the Lost Boys of Sudan in Chicago.  This movie wasn't out yet though.  But then, a few years ago my mom happened to meet and talk to one of the lost boys in the film and she recommended it to me for sociology.  I'm so thankful to her for that. Anyway, in the movie we see numerous cultural differences.

To speak about culture in a more distinct way, think in terms of the way sociologists might explain all the components of culture; culture is made up of material culture as well as the nonmaterial: gestures, language, norms, mores, folkways, taboos, values.


Watch the documentary

With all of those cultural components in mind, especially values, watch the documentary at one of the sites below and then answer the questions in the Google Form.

Here it is on Watchdocumentaries.com (direct link here)

Here it is on Tubi

Here it is on Youtube (free with ads)

Here is the movie on Amazon Prime

NOTE: The first 10 minutes gives background into the Sudanese civil war.  Although brief, some of the scenes are upsetting.  But the rest of the movie is not like that.

Answer the questions below in the Google form here.

Part 1: Beginning to finding work in America.  Please focus on the cultural differences that the boys must adjust to, especially, norms (folkways, mores, taboos) and language.  

1.  Describe some of the norms that the Sudanese men are used to that are different from American norms.

2.  Describe some of the material culture that is different for them.  

3.  Although the men speak English, what is some language (words, phrases) that they learn in America? 

Part 2:  From work to their Sudanese Ingroup

For the second half of the ethnographic documentary, please turn your attention toward the cultural values that are shaping the boys' lives in America.  

4.  How is life in America different and difficult? 

5.  In what ways was the refugee camp easier/healthier for them?

6. How do they turn to their Sudanese in-group to find meaning?

Other Resources:

This post explains more about immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers and the 2017-2023 crisis at the border.

Here is John Bul Dau's Foundation website which also includes information about his memoir and ways that they are serving Africa and how you can help.

Here is John Bul Day speaking about his life, his foundation and the Lost Boys.

Here is his Ted Talk:

Lost Boys on NPR 2007.

From PBS the documentary, The Day I Had To Run details the story of the Lost Boys.

60 Minutes part 1

60 Minutes part 2

Seeds of Sudan

International Rescue Committee timeline of the Lost Boys

March 2016 South Sudan Faces Another Civil War
Sudan broke apart into two nations; Sudan and South Sudan.  South Sudan is where the Lost Boys in the movie returned to. Unfortunately, South Sudan faces a new civil war within itself.  

February 2024 Lost Boy Signs 3 Year NBA Contract

Duop Reath, NBA player for the Portland Trailblazers, was born in Sudan before moving to the Kakuma refugee camp when he was young due to the war. He talks about growing up in the camp and his journey in basketball. 

For more about refugees (and asylum seekers, immigrants and migrants) see this post.