“Live active cultures.” The phrase indicates the presence of beneficial bacteria in yogurt—“probiotics” or “for-lifers.” If yogurt does not have live active cultures, it’s candy.
Frequently I call upon yogurt to help people understand culture. It means the same thing for people that it does for yogurt: conditions that foster life and growth. This does not mean that everything about a given culture is life-giving, only that culture develops according to people’s efforts (best and worst) to live.
You need existing (old or aging) yogurt to make new yogurt. You also need heat and friction. Sound familiar?
Every new idea or practice in human culture is built on something existing as well. And cultural change always involves somebody (usually many bodies) getting hot under the collar, finding friction in the competing ideas of what is most life-giving for the next cultural moment.
Here’s the thing: every part of the culture contributes to its life and growth. It can’t be determined or fixed in one place and pushed on all the other places. And it’s not one big decision. Culture is fostered by thousands of micro-interactions, both frictive and adhesive. Life grows in a combination of circumstances.
Dorothy Day, one-time Marxist and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, often called upon the notion of building the new world “within the shell of the old,” a founding commitment of the Industrial Workers of the World.[1] She wanted food for hungry people, dignity for workers, and people to be known by their stories. So she set up cooperative houses for people to live, eat, share stories, and invest in common life. She didn’t live in all of them; she offered friction and adhesion so the houses could grow without her.
If you want the culture you are in to change, you can start right now, today, at the level of your interactions.
Be probiotic, i.e., for the life of the culture(s) you’re in. Be your interactions frictive or adhesive, contribute to conditions that foster life and growth, not just for you, but also for those with whom you come into contact.
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