Cultural Responsibility v4. (final revision)
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W1
Cultural safety is the caring (sincere) practice of intercultural discussion and collaboration –
for cultural permanence in the form of unique stories and their [ongoing] realisation–
represented voluntarily by inheritors of culture –
with the aim of creating oneness in a unified tapestry, or mosaic, of meaning, purpose, direction, and belonging by weaving together every culture distinctly and harmoniously.
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W4
A brief reflection on the above definition of cultural safety:
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An updated description of cultural safety inclusive of everything covered over the last few weeks might look like this:
Cultural safety is a personal practice – meaning this is something I act upon as an individual within intercultural discussion and collaboration –
recognising individuals as representatives of culture and cultures unto themselves at the same time –
for cultural permanence in the form of distinctive stories and lifestyles realised and expressed –
to create oneness across a broad, rainbow-hued tapestry, or mosaic, of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and belonging by weaving together every culture distinctly and harmoniously.
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W8
Cultural safety (responsibility) revised (from weeks 1 and 4):
An intercultural platform
Cultural responsibility is a technical way of saying, “be kind and respectful”. Do not offend. Make room for others. What it does not incorporate, simply because its aim is conservative, is the creation of an intercultural platform. In writing, it seems honest, and it may still be honest in practice. However, its logic is the unsatisfactory compromise of “let’s agree to disagree”, a ways away from inspiring unity and accord.
What is needed is a new practice of agreement. More than respectfully leaving each other to our own devices, sharing a stage without ever sharing a story, we can build an intercultural platform where the intrinsic sameness of our ideas, interests and desires can converge and elevate life to a new horizon.
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W10
I feel more determined in my desire to see practitioners and people everywhere build intercultural platforms and leave behind hollow vessels encumbered by identity and needless attachment to the past.
Beginning with the universal perspective of Oneness, I thought about what form engaging with disparate worldviews might take, and how unity might manifest. The conversation is ongoing and dynamic. Opinions inflate and conflict. Notions of identity obscure higher awareness and suppress expanding consciousness. I led with an affirmation of the voluntary preservation of cultural heritages by those within them and those beyond.
In Week 4, I focused on the individual as the locus of culture, and what this means for our present definitions of culture and cultural responsibility.
If individuals are themselves cultures, then they are their own standard and are not obligated to recreate and replicate the milieu of any community.
In Week 8, I drilled further into the current practice of what constitutes cultural responsibility – segregation and conflict built on arbitrary labels, religion and politics – and criticised the emptiness of seemingly progressive cultural respect as preventive and even blind to a futuristic, intercultural, global world.
In the last module and in the course overall, what are the pieces of content that have triggered the biggest reactions in you, positive and negative? What has provoked comfort, outrage or wonder? Why do you think this is?
Trying to overcome and transcend the zeitgeist of identity angst, capitalist constraints and oppression, international conflicts and war, and governmental control compounding with fixed levels of awareness and needless, repetitive behaviour – this is resistance.
When the course used the term ‘race’, I was (temporarily) outraged, upset, incredulous, impatient for change.
That term is outmoded and affects (and effects) nothing.
I felt new and renewed liberation in a widening perception of what it is to be — queer and non-binary deliberation opened this further.
And then, I felt (feel) confused and agitated by talk of efforts to reconcile with First Nations Australians from a world and paradigm that outgrew religion and tribal community with its archaic cosmology and outmoded relationships. And if ‘we’ say that ‘their’ world has evolved, then it is not a world at all except a Western, scientific world. To tolerate such ways of life is fine and upholds peace, but it does nothing like reconcile. Europeans – Western, monotheistic, scientific society – irreversibly changed the world of Aboriginal Australians the moment they laid eyes on the island continent.
As for talk of reclaiming sovereignty, the world belongs to no one and is a part of everyone.
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Some steps I can (and plan to) take to further global Oneness and intercultural, international cooperation and peace include:
Writing these blog posts and writing on similar bases in the future, inside and out of my degree
Assimilating myself into other cultures through language and friendship (which I am currently doing)
Creating art – films, books, plays, etc. – that envisions a new world where humans realise Oneness and transcend bonds of antiquity.
