You know how you can right click a website and view page source to see the code of the page?
I see a similar thing being possible to do for groups of people with shared values or cultures and subcultures.
What is the point? The point is to explicitly understand what shared narratives and beliefs drive the actions of the group. And actions shape our environment. If there is something that you don’t like about a given culture or subculture, it could be a good idea to try and understand what’s going on underneath the surface.
Another thing to ponder is what environmental pressures have led to the kind of culture or subculture you’re trying to understand. For example, perhaps a culture is extremely family oriented because they can’t rely as much on their institutions to help them and salaries are much lower compared to the Western world so they can’t afford to be as autonomous. Or it could be something along the lines of a creative subculture being created because of the concentration of institutions that invest in the arts in an area and artistic people that go there as a result.
And once this is understood, one can then start to ponder about the possible blind spots and trade offs these narratives are creating and then to think about what can be done about this given the constraints.
Here is a series of questions to think about:
Note that each preceding set of questions is to prepare for the next one. The first is to understand the object itself, the second is to understand what reinforces its shape, the third is to understand what is outside of it, the fourth set moves beyond “view page source” and understanding how the code has been modified before. The final question is to prompt one to go from theorizing and understanding to translation.
I. Nature of the Collective.
1. What are the default long-term goals that people of a culture/subculture tend to have and that they are actively working towards?
2. What narratives and beliefs form these goals?
The purpose here is to understand the nature of what it is you’re investigating.
II. Environmental and Internal Pressures
3. What possible external pressures incentivize their narratives, beliefs, and their long-term goals? (Economics, institutions and infrastructure, cultural self-reinforcement, etc.)
4. What is the inherent nature of the individuals in the collective, on average?
These two questions are to help you understand the constraints you’re working with and to hopefully give some idea of to what extent beliefs are realistically malleable. The third question has everything to do with environmental pressures that shape culture. For the fourth question, you will have to take into consideration the inherent nature of the individuals themselves. For example, some people can act very differently from the norm and to go against external incentives because their inherent nature enables them to. And perhaps you will find that many individuals are unable to deviate too far because their inherent nature does not permit them to.
III. Blindspots
5. What are you not allowed to talk about in your culture or subculture? (As in, what perspectives, if expressed, would lead to immediate social disapproval by your group? What triggers disgust or defense?)
6. What things can you talk about but wouldn't be understood?
The purpose of asking these is to understand blindspots and tradeoffs being made. Do note that disgust and defense are not necessarily bad in and of themselves as they are protective mechanisms. I emphasize seeing this as something neutral and as a tool to map out what values a culture or subculture could be blocking themselves off from. Because if A group despises B group and their beliefs, it’s possible they have good reason for doing so but at the same time, they block themselves off from understanding beliefs that could be potentially useful to their unique context because the disgust makes one generalize.
IV. Version History
7. What are examples of bottom up changes to culture made historically?
8. Are there common patterns that enabled their success?
These questions should supplement your understanding of the constraints and provide examples of source code change.
V. Translation
9. Given which people I have an understanding of and who will likely be receptive, which subculture should I target?
10. Given everything discussed, how can you frame your argument in such a way that the collective can understand?
It’s far easier to talk to people who you have familiarity with or who have commonality to you than to try and target everyone so I suspect targeting a subset of culture is the way to go and so you have to ask yourself, given everything you understand about them, how can you talk about the change you want to see in a way they would understand? Now there is a switch from theorizing to translating or compressing it in a way that is compatible with the understanding of who you are speaking to.