The cultural battleground

WE need to be aware of this human need. We have to take
care of our culture. If we want to grow and develop as authentic human
beings, culture is both unavoidable and indispensable in our life.

            Can we really say that we are conscious of our duties and
responsibilities toward our culture? Do we know what are involved in
this task? In our life's continuing struggle for meaning, culture is
one of the main fronts to attend to.

            A cursory look around would indicate that there's hardly
any deliberate effort to take care of our culture. It is somehow
presumed that we have a culture, but we are quite ignorant of how
caring for it has to be carried out.

            First of all, we need to understand its nature and
character. It has both objective and subjective dimensions, spiritual
and material aspects, global and local scope, etc. More importantly,
it has both passive and active parts, and we need to know how to
handle its many requirements.

            We cannot be totally passive in our attitude toward it,
though we cannot help but be receptive to it in our daily life. That's
because culture is like the air we breathe. This time, though, we need
to realize that we also have a role to play in creating that air, or
at least in purifying it and putting it in conditions proper to us.

            We just cannot allow culture to grow on its own. It needs
our intervention. We have to understand that culture, like everything
else in our life, is both a gift we receive and a project we have to
do and develop.

            Especially these days when the pace of development is
getting faster and more complex, there's now a greater need for us to
take fuller responsibility over it. We have to do things in such a way
that we can say we make our own culture, even if culture also to a
certain extent makes us.

            Our problem now is that we seem to be falling for a
mindless lifestyle of activism, guided mainly by values that are not
deeply rooted enough on our true human dignity. In fact, this
reference of what our true human dignity is has become impertinent to
many people.

            For many of us, the main principle that shapes our
lifestyle seems to be pragmatism, and all its cohorts—popularity or
fame, wealth and power, vanity and pride, etc. The inputs of faith and
religion, so indispensable in figuring out who we really are, that's
supposed to be basis of our culture, are hardly considered.

            We need to correct this anomaly. We have to dismantle the
so-called tyranny of relativism that a priori disposes anything that
has to do with religion. That's unfair. That's completely
undemocratic.

            With this defective attitude, we cannot help but generate
a thoroughly secularized culture that is allergic to spiritual and
supernatural realities. That would compromise the flowering of a
culture that is proper to us.

            That is why these days, many people find it hard to relate
what they are doing professionally, socially, politically, etc., to
God. Their activities do not bring them closer to God. In fact, the
reverse is true. Their activities bring them farther away from God.

            There ensues a growing awkwardness in our relation with
God. Religion becomes frozen in some formalistic rituals and customs,
emptied of its vital substance.

            With that predicament, what can we expect? For sure, the
temptations to deception, injustice, etc., cannot be avoided. The
stronger ones in worldly terms simply dominate the others. Our
weaknesses, like our laziness and our concupiscence, cannot be
properly addressed and healed. They tend to fester.

            We need to create a culture that is proper to us as
persons and ultimately as children of God. It is a culture that
embraces both the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our
temporal affairs and eternal goal. Nothing less is needed.

            For this, we need to help one another. The creation and
development of culture is a universal concern. It has to involve all
of us. Thus, we need to be more aware of what we call here as the
cultural front of our life's struggles. We should avoid being
indifferent to it.

            At the moment, we can ask for example if we know how to
place this new phenomenon of the Internet technology in the pursuit of
developing a culture proper to us. Has our fascination for it led us
closer to God and to the others? Has it built up more solidarity,
justice, and charity?