THE MULTICULTURAL EXPERIENCE (RRL, 1993)

The way one formulates a question leads unavoidably to its answer. However, not every question has a positive answer. For instance, if a foreign student in the United States is asked how do you think the multicultural experience will affect your participation in society when you return to your country?, such a student, if sincere and smart, would feel like between a rock and a hard place. Indeed, answering that question means to invent the future, and at least one might think of two different sort of futures. Hopes and wishes make the childish one. The other future is drawn by the human being aware of his immersion in a bigger complex. Keeping this in mind, one should sketch a consistent picture of those two possible paths towards the future.

The actual issue is: how the commerce with people from different origins (multicultural experience) can modify the course of one life within a given group (social role)? In the American university environment, the evaluation of such impact ends up in the following crossroad: the respective Eastern and Western perspectives. Despite the technological appeal and the moralistic campaign spread by an ideology self–named spatial age, Eastern people deal in their intimacy with worlds almost invisible for Westerners. One has to overcome a wide abyss to start a friendship with an Oriental. They still behave according to the subtle teachings that support their cultures even in their modern forms.

As it is well known, the division between East and West is a mistaken division originated in the West. As somebody said, Europe is probably just a peninsula of Asia. Despite this misleading geography, the distinction could be described as follows: a searching for different archetypes. Westerners are fascinated by the Robinson Crusoe complex --a moral and psychological archetype. Easterners, in contrast, have as a sort of background the New Adam condition, which is an archetype eternal like Plato's ideas. A close examination of both leads to different implications.

Robinson is an island. His island is the plastic imagination, restless and whipped by all kinds of emotions. For a plastic imagination, individualism is cardinal. Individualism, as somebody pointed out, is the rejection of any authority or power over the mere physical and mental human conditions. Being an individualist, Robinson is an island aware of his isolation. Since he stands on a shaky psychological ground, he cannot help feeling nostalgic about terra firma. Without knowing why, other islands exist somewhere else and are welcome provided that they appreciate the especial pedestal that Robinson deserves. Unfortunately, those others want that appreciation for themselves: it is the basic teaching of the archetype. Beyond this consideration, a sphinx appears proposing enigmas that have to do with the death of the individual. Robinson fears of death are shown in his usage of language.

Since few centuries ago, in the West, expressions such as enlightening, revolutionary or scientific discovery raise an emotional mental atmosphere. They all share an aura, sound authoritative and provide with a hint of self-importance. One might also include multicultural and social role among them. Let's examine the first one. Multicultural infers variety, color, motion, and fun. A multicultural gathering implies an extremely lively get–together. It is never imagined as a friendly encounter for a complete lack of understanding. That is why in the U.S. coming across a foreigner is seen as an encyclopedic event, as enjoyable as a pyramid should be for an explorer. In fact, meeting a foreigner need be not different than meeting any person. However, it is a Robinsonean propensity to enjoy the picture of one's own open mind.

On the other hand, social role sits in the opposing corner. It implies a common task submitted to a romantic consideration --the way how an ordinary person becomes a hero suffering privations and defending his/her rights to be happy. It is the urban version of surviving in the jungle. Again, there is no reason supporting that being alive implies to deserve an outstanding place among the others, either it infers the existence of something called "a successful life." Yet these straightforward deductions cannot hurt the pride of being the spectator of one's own martyrdom, theatrically dreamed.

This is the modern European and EuroAmerican contribution to the human consciousness. Its archetype should be stated in the following words: get ready for daydreaming. Naturally, the impact of this maxim leads the mind to a future full of promises, and a personal version of the "happy end." This essay could have been written that way. However, "there are more things" –as Hamlet said to Horatio–, and one should not disregard them. A psychological archetype cannot fulfill the inner worlds of a human being. Everyone has to make the choice, but it also depends on everyone's serenity. Indeed, how a serene person can disregard what a Japanese young woman, letting down her guard, said in a friendly conversation?

My family is wealthy now, but they know that things do not stay the same forever. We will be poor again. This does not bother us. We are not Americans.

How cannot one refer this to conceptions like samsara, karma, and the Japanese "the most strange of the events" (datsu raku shin jin)? Furthermore, how can a serene person ignore the Arabs praying in a classroom and following their imân? Talking with them, is it not explicit that they have always three essential things in mind: the submission (al–islâm), the faith (al–imân), and the spiritual virtue (al–ihsân)? Everyone familiar with an American university campus has a similar story to tell and a similar conclusion to reach: despite all the differences, people from different origins can communicate well but, when the Robinsonean complex starts to lead the conversation, it creates an undercurrent of conflict. The explanation is simple. The New Adam condition does not accept compromises.

The New Adam knows of the non–existence of the individual considered as a person. The person, as Romans expressed it in Latin, is a mask. The mask is a superficial device in the human life. Devices are tools. Tools are means, not ends. Perhaps a person results from the obeisance to the mandates of the one's own archetype, that is, from the self–denial. Thus, the New Adam condition is reached when a human being becomes his own archetype according to his temperament and the conditions given by his sex. Since sexes are poles in the being and the temperaments are part of them, isolation does not exist. Without islands (Thomas Merton wrote a bright essay on this topic), the universe is seen as an funnel: everything converges at the same point. Plotinous' imagery for the universe is plain: con–spiracy. Many worlds exist within a dynamic universe, whose apex is the human nature. It is the well-known division between microcosm and macrocosm made by the ancient philosophers. Every human being has to find his own way to the eternity.

Detached from the human condition, the New Adam represents the restoration of the paradise lost. This is a paradox, and paradoxes are the New Adam's usage of language. This usage sheds a new light on expressions such as "multicultural" or "social role." From a Western standpoint, those meanings are darkness. "Multicultural" infers the diamond shape of the truth. After the Tower of Babel, people can no longer understand each other. According to the literature of wisdom, variety, multiplicity stands for sin, fragility, and non–permanency. Languages are barriers, and the customs are the excuse for discrimination. Even in the religious field. The truth is a diamond, and the human beings only can grasp faces of it. However, from the New Adam nature, variety is transformed in an inverted mirror. The deeper one dives in a "strange" custom, the quicker the common link with a "familiar" one will be found. Shortly, the truth has many faces; all of them are only masks hiding the true center. Once somebody described the snow as a God's blessing. It comes down from the sky, and turns upside down the earth's surface. The shapes of things get revealed and the foot–print suggest the presence of a world, which is not the daily world. The snow makes evident that creation is an inverted mirror. In a multicultural experience, the heart of a serene person, as the snow does, makes him recognize the traces of the eternal man.

On the other hand, "social role" gets transformed in the famous topic of theatrum mundi. The world is a huge stage upon which human beings perform their acting. Jean Crasset's words, a French Jesuit of the 1700's, are still very clear:

«One acts as a captain, the other as a soldier [...] one as a king, the other as a prelate. Does the role of the captain correspond with that of the prelate? Grace is given you for one part but not the other. If you enter the stage at the wrong time and in the wrong order, you will cut a poor figure [...] (R.Ricard: Estudios de literatura religiosa española)

In spite of the Robinsonean taboo, there is no room for personal daydreaming. Getting knowledgeable in different backgrounds has only a purpose: to get detached from the human shape that imprisons the mind every day. Once this has been found, the one's own role will also be evident. That is why the basic teaching of the New Adam archetype could be stated this way --the man who is a person knows how to collaborate with the kernel of the universe.

Both archetypes are found in a multicultural experience. Since the main question proposed was about the future, there is no a present answer. Anyhow, from both, the second results more appealing for whom writes these lines. This does not mean that the actual description of that path is possible right now. However, a clue could be found in Goethe's advice about the study of the natural shapes. The goal is simple, and Bloy made it explicit in a more personified way: "Personality is the particular image that each soul has of God." That is why the best answer is still the silence.