The power of cultural devices

Anyone who knows me even a little bit or that has browsed over the posts in this blog would already know that, even if I am an engineer by trade, I am also an amateur anthropologist and linguist at heart, to the point that I would do almost anything to read or listen to the account of a quirky cultural practice or a linguistic oddity. The ingenuity of humans is nearly limitless and the number of different ways that we can find to solve complex problems is simply amazing. Actually we are even able to invent new problems that do not happen in reality (as far as we know) and figure out solutions for them: this is precisely the goal and the breeding grounds of speculative fiction, which sets a social environment slightly different than ours and tries to explore how the alternative setting still harbors behaviors similar to ours and when the parallelism breaks and gives birth to new uses and practices.

This concept of defining the principles that rule a fictive environment is usually know and worldbuilding, and just this afternoon I ran into this post by a certain kuusamaagi (if the link does not work, just look up their name, the post has been cited so many times) where they posited about how a contrived world could perfectly show odd cultural practices as long as they are dealt with in a reasonable way. In their example a city loves its pigeons to the point that they are not only regarded as a pest, but appreciated and even fed. Of course, not having significant predators, this leads to a huge number of individuals which, in turn, deliver their feces all over town. This, which would be severely problematic in the world as we know it, would be perfectly fine if the city is willing and has the resources to deal with the poop of their beloved pets. The author goes even further to argue that the job of "scraping pigeon poop" would be highly regarded and there could even be a family name meaning precisely that (in the guise of Smith, Miller or Carpenter). Due to the incessant need for bird poop cleaning also all other sorts of trash would be removed alongside, so the city would be gleaming at all times.

Photo: Amanda

Alien as this custom may sound, it is not quirkier than many others that we have accepted and been practicing for years. As a very notable example, having everyone rest at the same time every seventh day does not make physical sense, because cattle still needs to be milked, all the domestic animals (and human animals as well) have to be fed, apples and melons will ripe the same regardless of the day of the week and so forth. And yet, because we have agreed to do so, many services are not available on Sundays and have learnt to deal with it (e.g. doing your grocery shopping another day of the week). This cultural practice serves (or at least used to serve) primarily as an identity device in the Europe of the Middle Ages, with Muslims resting on Fridays, Jews on Saturdays and Christians on Sundays, but it also has the additional benefit of all the leisure activities and services which are in fact open on Sunday for the enjoyment of everybody else.

A similar effect comes from the paid vacation. Once we have established that everyone has to work to earn their living it does not make economic sense to pay them a few weeks' wages even if they do not work. We have now established the long-term benefits both for the employee and the employer of allowing them some time to recover, thus improving their performance the rest of the year and reducing the risk of burnout. Additionally, the introduction of paid vacation gave raise to the popularization of tourism, which before was restricted to the well-off that did not need to work to earn their living (or at least did not need to work every day).

One most curious cultural practices that I have recently learnt about is the boustrophedon, the practice of writing in alternating directions, one line from left to right with the "usual" characters and the next one from right to left with "reversed" (i.e. vertically mirrored) ones. This practice was common among the Etruscans and early Greeks, to be eventually replaced during the Hellenistic period with the usual (in Europe) writing from left to right. The word has a Greek etymology  and can be loosely translated as "writing in the way an ox plows a field", isn't it beautiful?

It is very hard to make a fair judgement of anybody's cultural practices, since we are usually not aware of how the custom came to be or what implications it might have for the cohesion of a society, so I try to keep a distant curiosity, trying to understand the underlying motives but never attempting to promote or discourage them, especially the ones that are not part of my own culture. What is your position in this respect? Are you also curious about foreign practices? Let me know in the comments below if you like, and have a nice weekend.