Module One - Activity One

The following ideas come from Hallowell's Culture and Experience (1955; 2nd Edition, 1971): University of Pennsylvania Press. "The concepts of self and culture are interdependent: one cannot exist without the other. Thus, while it has become commonplace to regard the self as a cultural product, and enquire as to the 'environmental' (cultural) factors that lead to the expression or inhibition of this or that aspect of the self, we must not forget the reverse perspective; that culture itself is a product of the self. Selves are constituted within culture, and culture is maintained by the community of selves.

It cannot be called 'void' or 'not-void',Or both or neither;
But in order to point it out, It is called 'the Void'. - Madhyamika Shastra: xv, 3.

When Zen Buddhism starts its pupils off on their path to enlightenment by asking them to come to grips with the relativity of existence, it does so by pointing out the relativity that is often cloaked in our everyday use of language:

When everyone recognises beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;
When everyone recognises goodness as good, there is already evil.
'To be' and 'not to be' arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realised;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited; ...
Before and after are in mutual sequence. . .From Tao Te Ching

Humans are not only social animals but also cultural ones; and that means that we are also moral animals: thus our society exhibits both a social order and a moral order. This moral order comprises norms of conduct and effective social sanctions, implicit or explicit, to back them up. This, implies self-awareness of one's own conduct, self-appraisal of one's conduct with reference to socially recognised standards of value, some volitional control of one's own behaviour, a possible choice of alternative lines of conduct, etc. ... without the development of self-awareness as an intrinsic part of the socialisation process, without a concept of self that permits attitudes directed towards the self as an object to emerge and crystallize, we would not have some of the essential conditions necessary for the functioning of a human society. (Hallowell, 1971: 83))