27. Bah! Bar black sheep?

In May, in Berega’s territory, four more mothers and dozens of children will have died needlessly of preventable causes, whilst from 5000 miles away, we try to help to make a difference. If we give up, the weary fall-back position is that neither culture will mind much; and, historically at least, neither will do much. Why have cultures had such a tendency to let things be? Why is inertia such a powerful force, when it doesn’t even exist?

Why do some cultures tolerate inappropriate death, inefficiency and corruption?

In the UK, we have an expression ‘the black sheep of the family’. It refers to people whose waywardness or disreputability makes their elderly aunts rarely talk to them. 

Black sheep are barred from the cosiness of social acceptability. Is it not strange, though, that black sheep are not prized? They are unusual and striking animals – precious offspring arising from a rare genetic event. And yet shepherds, far from valuing these future stain-proof garments, traditionally regard them as a bad omen.

The reality is that we humans have a tendency – like sheep – to do what those around us are doing; and if that means being woolly, saying “Baa”, and looking for grass in a blizzard on a hillside, then that’s what most of us will do. We learn to tolerate what should really be intolerable, and to be blind to what is plainly visible. Even when it might be for our own good to challenge the status quo, an invisible force shuts our mouths and stills our passions. We have, it seems, a deep-felt and powerful need to conform to societal norms, irrespective of the advantages of sometimes breaking the mould. (Breaking the mould can indeed be good. Einstein, for instance, was an off-the-wall genius who profoundly influenced the sum of human knowledge. And yet, in an irony of relativity, he was shunned by his elderly aunts.)

On the other hand, it is true of course that in many cases this communal disdain for those who do it differently is well-founded. Society often stands for what is right and wholesome, and waywardness can mean social irresponsibility – a failure to put the community’s needs before one’s own. In such situations, being wayward will seem to most group members not just inappropriate, but actually immoral. In this way, different versions of morality grow up, fed by a bespoke mixture of tolerance, intolerance and inertia.

My point, however, is that society sometimes gets it wrong. It tolerates what should not be tolerated, and those who stand out from the herd are wrongly regarded as black sheep, even though their take may be the right one. In the Cities of the Plain in the days of Lot and Abraham, those who welcomed visitors with fruit scones, a nice cup of tea, and Gomorrah merchandising, were in the small minority. And yet history now unequivocally plumps for their approach as being more conducive to a healthy tourist industry. Sometimes unhelpful or unsavoury codes of behaviour creep into a culture, and, without even realising that not everybody invades-others-countries-in-order-to-manipulate-world-power, suddenly it is a matter of popular pride to do so. We knuckle under, and find ourselves doing what, in another epoch, or other corner of the world, might be considered ill-mannered at best, or positively immoral at worst. The way-it-is determines the way-it-should-be. 

(In middle-class English households like mine, for instance, it is a brave and aberrant husband who stands up against the tyranny of having to make conversation instead of doing important stuff.)

The end result of this natural phenomenon is that polar opposite cultures can emerge, where what is anathema in one society is perfectly acceptable in another, and vice versa. When Victorian missionaries’ wives first went to Africa, some were more affronted by the bare breasts than by the paganism. In a similar vein, in our culture now, eating meat is perfectly acceptable. But what if a hippy/New Age culture were isolated from the modern world for a couple of generations:

“Hi Meadow-Lark. Have you seen Gaia anywhere?”

“Yes, Buddica. I think she’s in the cow-home.”
(Buddica goes to cow home and finds Gaia.)

“Gaia! What in Ashtanga’s Name are you doing?!”

“Oh, hi mum. I’m just cutting Bessie’s throat. I fancied sneaking some first-class protein into our nut roast.
We may be short of yoghurt for a while.”

To us in the North-West Quadrisphere, the same outrage is provoked by the inefficiency, inertia and corruption we find in the cultures of far too many low-income countries. This week, I learned that the Tanzanian Government agency responsible for paying for certain of Berega’s staff and services, have once again failed to come up with the cash. At the same time, the national power grid engineers visited to link up all the staff houses to the grid, but seemed to get equal job satisfaction from not connecting all the staff houses to the grid.

We cannot be too hasty, however, in judging the unacceptable face of an alien culture, for fear that the alien culture might point out our own more dubious excesses. What’s more, maybe if we only earned $2/day, out of which we had to bribe people to pay for basic needs, we might not feel so self-assured about the immorality of trousering the odd back-hander.

I cannot help feeling, however, an overwhelming and determined passion that Tanzania and indeed the world might be rid of such nonsense. This mouldy infestation of our planet needs many more mould-breakers: more like Einstein, some non-talkative husbands, and the nicer sort of black sheep.