[뉴욕타임스로 논술을 잡아라]The Culture Of Nations

The Culture Of Nations

August 13, 2006 / By David Brooks

■ 칼럼

Diplomats in New York rack up * a lot of unpaid oparking tickets 1), but not all rack them up at the same rates. According to the economists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, diplomats from countries that rank high on the Transparency International 2) corruption index pile up huge numbers of unpaid tickets, whereas diplomats from countries that rank low on the index barely get any at all.

Between 1997 and 2002, the U.N. Mission of Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat. Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Syria also committed huge numbers of violations. Meanwhile, not a single parking violation by a Swedish diplomat was recorded. Nor were there any by diplomats from Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway or Canada.

The reason there are such wide variations in ticket rates is that human beings are not merely products of economics. The diplomats paid no cost for parking illegally, thanks to diplomatic immunity *. But human beings are also shaped by cultural and moral norms. If you're Swedish and you have a chance to pull up in front of a fire hydrant, you still don't do it. You're Swedish. That's who you are.

Walter Lippmann 3) got to the crux of the matter in a speech 65 years ago. People don't become happy by satisfying their desires, he said. They become happy by living within a belief system that restrains and gives coherence * to their desires:

“Above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame - even life itself - what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence.”

People need the coherence their culture provides and value it even more than easy parking.

For several decades a veteran foreign aid worker, Lawrence E. Harrison 4), has contemplated * the power of culture in shaping behavior. He's concluded that cultural differences mostly explain why some nations develop quickly while others do not.

All cultures have value because they provide coherence, but some cultures foster development while others retard * it. Some cultures check corruption, while others permit it. Some cultures focus on the future, while others focus on the past. Some cultures encourage the belief that individuals can control their own destinies, while others encourage fatalism *.

In a new book, “The Central Liberal Truth,” Harrison takes up the question that is at the center of politics today: Can we self-consciously change cultures so they encourage development and modernization? Harrison is writing about poverty, but this is incidentally a book about the war on terror, and whether it is possible to change culture in the Middle East and the ghettos of Muslim Europe.

On the one hand, Harrison is an optimist. He has taken his title from one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 5) greatest observations: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

But when Harrison turns to * how politics can change culture, you find he is a man who has been made aware of the limitations on what we can know and achieve. Harrison and a team of global academics studied cultural transformations *in Ireland, China, Latin America and elsewhere. They concluded that cultural change can't be imposed from the outside, except in rare circumstances. It has to be led by people who recognize and accept responsibility for their own culture's problems and selectively reinterpret their own traditions to encourage modernization.

Harrison observes that gigantic investments in education, and especially in improving female literacy *, usually precede * transformations. Chile was highly literate in the 19th century, and in 1905, 90 percent of Japanese children were in school. These investments laid the groundwork for take offs that were decades away *.

Harrison points to many other factors - leaders who encourage economic liberalization, movements that restrict the power of the clerics - but the main impressions he leaves are that cultural change is measured in centuries, not decades, and that cultures are separated from one another by veils of complexity and difference.

If Harrison is right, it is no wonder that young Muslim men in Britain might decide to renounce freedom and prosperity for midair martyrdom 6). They are driven by a deep cultural need for meaning. But it is also foolish to think we can address the root causes of their toxic desires. We'll just have to fight the symptoms of a disease we can neither cure nor understand.

■ 주해

1)oparking 은 open parking 의 줄임말. 오픈 파킹 장소에서는 옆에 있는 미터기에 요금을 코 인으로 넣고 주차해야 함. 코인을 넣지 않거나 시간을 초과하면 딱지(ticket)를 받게 됨.

2)국제 투명성기구(이하 TI로 줄임)는 1993년 설립된 비영리사단법인. 한국을 비롯한 전세계 77개국에 개별국가 본부가 설립돼 있다. 있다. TI가 조사한 부패지수 순위는 각국의 부패 정 도를 비교하기 위한 자료로 공신력이 높다.

3)1889∼1974. 미국의 작가, 언론인이자 정치평론가. 냉전(cold war)이라는 말을 처음 썼다.

4)미국 국제개발처에서 1965∼1981년 중남이 5개국 업무를 담당했다. ‘저(低)발전은 정신상태’ 의 저자.

5)1927∼2003. 저명한 사회학자이자 미국의 4선 상원의원. 유엔대사. 동료의원들이 읽은 책보 다 더 많은 책을 저술했다는 말을 들었다.

6)공중의 순교는 미국 9·11사건과 같은 항공기 테러를 말함.

■ 어휘

*rack up=(Informal)To accumulate or score. 예) rack up points

*immunity=(Law)Exemption from normal legal duties, penalties, or liabilities, granted to a special group of people.

*coherence=The quality or state of cohering, especially a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts.

*contemplate=To consider carefully and at length; meditate on or ponder, 예) contemplated the problem from all sides

*retard=To cause to move or proceed slowly; delay or impede

*fatalism=The doctrine that all events are predetermined by fate and are therefore unalterable.

*turn to=To begin work. 예문) If you quit dawdling and just turn to, your chores will be done soon.

*transform=To change markedly the appearance or form of.

*literacy=The condition or quality of being literate, especially the ability to read and write.

*precede=To come, exist, or occur before in time.

*away=Distant, as in space or time: The city is miles away. The game was still a week away.

‘할 수 있다’로 바뀐 우리의 국민문화, 자긍심 가져라

■ 돋보기

국민 문화(national culture)는 국민성을 형성하는 문화적 성격이나 양식의 총체 또는 한 국민이나 민족에 널리 공유된 문화인식을 의미합니다. 국민문화는 여러 세대를 거치면서 법률 규칙 관습 등으로 나타납니다. 한 나라의 국민문화는 그 나라 국민의 국민성과 가치관, 의식주, 관습과 다분히 관련이 있습니다.

국민 문화는 그 나라 국민의 총체적인 노력에 의해 바뀔 수 있습니다. 바로 우리나라가 모범적인 사례입니다. 한국은 불과 한 세대 만에 압축적인 경제성장을 이룩하고 국민 문화와 질서 의식이 선진국에 근접해 가고 있습니다. 제가 해외에서 만난 한 언론인은 “한국이 그냥 발전한 것이 아니라 ‘skyrocket’ 했다”고 말했습니다. 짧은 기간에 로켓처럼 치솟아 올랐다는 말이지요.

필자의 어린 시절 일제강점기부터 교사를 한 사람들은 학생들이 잘못하면 “조센징은 별 수 없어”라는 자기민족을 비하하는 말을 하곤 했습니다. 일본인들이 식민지 조선인들을 경멸할 때 쓰던 말이지요. 그러나 세계 11위의 경제대국이 된 지금 자기민족을 비하하는 말을 하는 사람은 없습니다. 우리의 국민문화는 ‘별수 없어’에서 ‘할 수 있다 정신(Can-do spirit)’으로 바뀌었습니다.

로런스 E 해리슨은 “어떤 나라는 빨리 발전하는 데 비해 다른 나라는 그러지 못하는 것은 바로 문화의 차이”라고 설명했습니다. 우리의 문화는 발전을 지체(遲滯)시키기보다는 발전을 촉진하는 문화이고, 과거에 초점을 맞추기보다는 미래에 집중하는 문화라고 할 수 있습니다. 개인이 자신의 운명을 통제할 수 있다는 신념을 고무하는 문화라고 할 수 있습니다. 우리는 국민 문화에 대한 자긍심을 가져야 합니다.☞자세한 주해는 이지논술 사이트를 참고하세요

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