Friday July 1st (part 2): Culture

This afternoon at the wedding service, I sketched out the features of the cultural landscape in a bit more detail. It was fun by all accounts. My friend’s daughter had married a Polynesian man from one of the Solomons’ outer islands, and the blend of cultures provided an interesting display of cultural plumage.

The groom's family bearing gifts including a live pig.

Yes, there is still uniqueness to the cultural landscapes of the Solomons; it’s not a cultural wasteland. It’s more of a melting pot though, than the fruit salad that we profess to have served up in New Zealand. Some of the traditional beliefs have managed to hang in here while others have been outcompeted by the seeds of Christianity and Westernisation that have been sown here.

 I guess that this is, to some degree, the best that can be hoped for in terms of cultural evolution, that one culture would take the positive attributes of another, and incorporate them into its own. At least the Polynesian people had maintained some uniqueness and not been overwhelmed by their proximity to ‘Melanesia,’ and at least both cultures have not been bull-dozed by the machinery of globalisation.

The bride's family showing off their heritage.



On the other hand though, it became disgustingly clear to me as I watched a drunken man staggering around the ladies doing their traditional dancing, that this culture has not taken the best aspects from its neighbouring cultures. It has received the West’s vanity, and what is left of traditional culture is largely the arbitrary accessories.



The newly-weds.



I watched as people with cameras walked up to the front of the crowd as if the technology made them transparent, or perhaps just superior, and I thought how only the most basic of the traditional concepts have persisted – those of family and gender and hierarchy. The more complex concepts – conservation to strengthen family heritage, the leadership of elders and chiefs to ensure that wise decisions are made in the interests of the family, and so on – these have been swept away by the deluge from the West.

Now that even family unity and self-respect are under threat, sustainability and enlightened leadership don’t stand a chance. Culture has, to some extent, become an act for the sake of entertainment; no longer a lens through which to view the world.