Multiculturalism: Hinayana vs. Mahayana Ideologies

Posted on May 7, 2004 in Anthropology Compassion Crosstalk Social Justice

A screech and a halt must be called for here. Mike Golby writes:

Joel is a sucker for punishment. He lists many of the things that irk him about our Western or, to relocate to my neck of the woods, Western-ized approach to regulating life. In other words, and like Yule, he fights the inexorable march to sameness and is therefore fiercely protective of the individual. Hey, I agree with all Joel’s stated views. More, I believe that if you protect the individual, you protect the people. Frankly, it’s self-fucking-evident, but try telling it to the freaks promoting insidiously divisive concepts like multi-culturalism.

I am not an opponent of “Greater Vehicle” multiculturalism. To explain myself, let me introduce you to the Buddhist notion of Mahayana (Greater or Bigger Vehicle) vs. Hinayana (Lesser or Smaller Vehicle). The question to ask is how inclusive is the particular version of the ideology. Mahayana vehicles hold more people, often because they’re less stringent than Hinayana vehicles which tend to be more purist. Think of a bus versus a motorcycle: both vehicles take you to a destination in a hurry, but the bus carries more people at once.

I do not buy certain versions of multiculturalism: I do not buy the version where all cultures are equal, where I have to stay silent while women are forced to undergo circumcision so that they lose all sexual pleasure, while twenty year olds with guns torture Iraqi civilians in ways that would have made Saddam Hussein choke on his lunch because “we’re just imitating the culture”. I reject that form of multiculturalism. I also reject forms of multi-culturalism which require the individuals to go along with the group because “it’s the culture”. There’s overlap between these two ideologies; the distinctions are slight but important. In the first, all truths are equal; in the second, some truths are more equal than others.

My college degree is in cultural anthropology, a discipline largely shaped by the writings of Franz Boas, a German-American originally trained in physics who brought to the study of humankind the discipline of Science. In my critique of post-modernism, I do not reject multiculturalism as adamantly as Mike seems to believe I do. (Postmodernism is a poorer version of multiculturalism.) What I reject is a Hinayana form of multiculturalism which silences me when the issue of human rights violations or war is at issue, when Creationists try to force their religion on everyone by rejecting the discipline of science. I also reject the Hinayana form which says that because I am an American, I have to bob my head while Bush does what he wants or that allows people to define any criticism coming from me as entirely determined by my Americanism or that blames me for anything Bush does.

The kind of multi-culturalism that I celebrate begins with the individual. You might call me a cultural-universalist, one who has informed his opinions by scanning across a variety of approaches to being human and continues to do so. In my discussions of religion, have you not seen me cite positive aspects of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Paganism, atheism and agnosticism? Have you not also seen my willingness to point to what I do not like in each of those? My very genes and my cultural inheritance from my parents is multicultural: as I explore history, it continues to surprise and delight me that the traditions we practice in this house come from so many different places; and that we live in a time and a place where new traditions can be shaped and incorporated by us as persons.

That’s my multi-culturalism, the understanding that while Science can help me discern, I must also confess that there are many solutions to the problem of being a human being, that no culture has a complete lock on Truth. True multi-culturalism is democratic: we must be ready to concede that we’re wrong about some things, as well as hold our ground when we can prove that we’re right. It’s also important to admit points of ambiguity: for example, the meaning of the hijab to the women of Islam.

If condemned to death and burnt as a heretic, I would go proudly to the stake knowing that I was being killed for championing a cause for respect of the dignity of all human beings.

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This article from September should also assist you in understanding where I am coming from.