THE POINT OF CULTURE

THE POINT OF CULTURE  is to expand the possible behavior of humans to respond to a changing situation.  The people in and around Glendive, where population is thinning so much that the Big Box stores have left, have a choice between staying and leaving.  Why do they stay?  Because ShopKO and Walmart and shopping in general was not the center of their lives.  The manager of the hospital in his effort to bring in new psychiatrists knew that and wrote this:

Welcome to Glendive, Montana! Outdoor enthusiasts will thrill to almost limitless possibilities around Glendive. Imagine watching the Milky Way nightly and counting shooting stars as you fall asleep; quiet so deep you can hear your soul relax; hunting or just having a staring contest with wildlife. The Yellowstone River, the nation’s longest untamed river, starts in Yellowstone Park and flows through the heart of Glendive.  

This is well-played, since it is indeed a strong reason for many to come to and stay in small shrinking High Line prairie towns.  But there are others, for instance, knowing people as individuals, being part of a community and respected there, wanting to be of service to people who are doing their best but possibly suffering, nostalgia for years earlier, inspiring books, looking for safety for one's family, and so on.

Another aspect redefines what should be the response to people who choose suicide.  On the one side is the conviction that farming and ranching are a certain way of life based on an individual's experience and right to make decisions. This is on a spectrum.  That in itself is threatened by the predatory capitalism of mega-corporation businesses, possibly owned and staffed by people from another country.  

A psychiatrist can do nothing about this.  It will take legislators and voters.  The defenders of an old way of life are indeed threatened by population thinning and law tilting, but that can be opposed by either going to the state government or hiring someone competent to act as representatives on the behalf of the people on the land.  We've let this slip away into the hands of petty politicians vulnerable to corruption.

If people see on television that life in the "urbs" where population is dense enough to support experts and contemporary households, maybe based on eating out or driving a certain kind of car, and depending on passive events to fill their lives, whether opera or ball games, then living in Glendive will suggest there's "nothing to do" and that they're not meeting a national standard of living.  A psychiatrist can do nothing about this and may even think this way.  The answer lies in forming a second "way of life" group that supports and connects with people like themselves.  My Twitter has tweets from families north of Calgary who know how to do this.  Hutterites know how to do this.  Wendell Berry knows how to do this.  

Most of all the indigenous people knew how to do this in ways that could be adapted for the present.  The great advantage is that it attaches people to the land, so they see the need and ability to do things like "re-wiggle the streams" so that they house fishes and adapt to floods.  Not everyone has to grow wheat in huge swaths of land, which is very much like resource mining since it diminishes the fertility of the soil.

Go back and look at the advertisement again:  It is likely to attract young men.  That's the demographic we think of for doctors, but why must mental health -- in the sense of the desire to live -- be medicalized?  Why isn't it religious/spiritual (maybe in congregations and maybe not) or political (see above) or a taste for education?  Why can't it be expressed in an ethic of repair and creation?   

As a solitary creature myself, I'm pretty wary of being "grouped" and making my center some kind of social life -- even in books or on Twitter where I have to fend off those who want to chat instead of think.  My family on one side is based on prosperity and on the other side by denial of change, so I wish them well -- but goodbye.  My education at the U of Chicago is impenetrable and inscrutable locally where most people did well to finish high schools.  Today's colleges and junior college tend to focus on vocation, qualification, instead of learning things from older people.  I was proud of my stepgrandson for working with an older man who taught ethics, pacing, and lore along with how to build.  In fact, if one really DID want to become a scholar of theology, it might be a better route than Div School, to find someone wise.

A psychiatrist is a role meant to cope with organic malfunction as well as mental/emotional structures and convictions dating back through life as experience taught its lessons.  Distrust and anxiety, suspicion and overreaction, can have been learned without ever being intended.  These things can be addressed through "the talking cure" which is more a matter of psychotherapy, the story of life.  In the past shrinks been mysterious, scary, because there was no vocabulary, no concepts, no system that would suggest how to change.  

This is no longer true and we no longer need a shrink or a shaman to understand ourselves.  The best insights for me came from groups where a leader was a resource and order-keeper, but people spoke up for each other if there was something missing or misunderstood.  A place like Glendive may think sharing groups are not good enough for the bleaker times on the High Line, but I say it is.  Even then there can be laughter, silliness, dancing and hugs.

When I moved into this house, which had been empty for three years, there was no furniture except a homemade table and a torn-up kitchen chair, half a five pound can of coffee, half a bottle of whiskey, an old sleeping bag, and big stack of pinochle score cards.  No one ever claimed them.  The owner may have been squatting since the door was never locked.  They were the accoutrements of a lifestyle.  It would make some people quite suicidal, taking the view that they were a failure for having nothing more or better.  But it could also be taken as a success, staying alive.