The Beauty of Being vs. the Excitement of Becoming

Albert Einstein was a German Jew who won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for Physics. He developed the theory of relativity and he is credited with the famous formula E = mc2. Einstein is universally recognized as one of the greatest minds the world has ever produced. His contribution to our understanding of the physical sciences is without equal. He was born in Germany in 1879, a place that offered state of the art academic institutions, arguably the most advanced institutions for science in the world at that time. He flourished.

In Stephen Ambrose's book "Custer and Crazy Horse" the author describes the parallels and vast differences between the American General, George Armstrong Custer, and the Lakota Sioux Warrior, Crazy Horse. Both were amazing leaders of their "people", courageous and victorious. In spite of those similarities there was a profound and irreconcilable difference between the two that was based on culture. One came from a circular culture and the other from a linear culture.

Custer and his men were outmanned and outsmarted and wiped out in the famous battle with Crazy Horse and the Sioux at Little Bighorn in 1876. It was a victory for the Sioux on that day but very short lived. It was very close to the end for the American Indian. The linear mindset of the European based, white culture, with it's goals of "manifest destiny" and it's thirst and drive for technological advances will always prevail over the circular culture in the end. It is only a matter of time. Sadly, the Native Americans were ill equipped to handle the onslaught of technology and the sense of entitlement exhibited by the advancing U.S. troops. The final outcome was as predictable as the laws of gravity.

"Crazy Horse believed that he was connected to all that there was, the earth, the sky, the sun and the moon, the plants and animals--everything was part of the Great Spirit. Custer saw himself as distinct from and superior to, everything--most of all, the animals and even some of his fellow human beings.

Custer was never satisfied with where he was. He always aimed to go on to the next higher station in his society. He was always in a state of becoming. Crazy Horse accepted the situations he found himself in and only aimed to be a brave Sioux warrior. He was in a state of being, not becoming."

-Stephen Ambrose "Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel lives of Two American Warriors"

What if you had taken Einstein at the time of his birth, and sent him to be raised by a Native American tribe in North America in, say, 1830? What if Einstein had never been exposed to the modern advancements of the developed world--Europe, the United States, etc.. What if he never made it to the University of Zurich to get his PhD, or to Cal Tech or Princeton because he was living off the land as a Navajo. What might Albert Einstein have grown up to be in the setting of a Native American tribe virtually isolated from modernity? In the interest of the ever unresolved "Nature vs. Nurture" discussion I think that hypothetical scenario is compelling to imagine.

Indigenous cultures are circular and very unlike linear European cultures. A circular culture does not evolve dramatically over time. It seizes on customs and ways of living and it doesn't advance from these patterns. A Navajo Indian born in 1600 will be largely indistinguishable from a Navajo Indian born 200 years later. The Navajo born 200 years later might be living exactly the way his great, great, great, great grandfather lived centuries before him. The only education that a typical indigenous culture receives is one that serves practical purposes: how to hunt, skin an animal, make clothing, build shelter, understand the forces of nature, etc.. The dwellings of the indigenous cultures in North America were not known to have advanced discernibly over the centuries. Why? We don't know exactly but certainly there can be a theory that indigenous cultures did not put high value in advancements. It could be said that indigenous cultures were content with the type of simplicity that they had enjoyed for centuries. They didn't see themselves as a "work in progress". Who is to say they got it wrong? It certainly was a rigid culture in that men and women had their customary roles to play. There was very little opportunity to stray from the established ways of life. There were very few choices as to how to live within the tribe and as far as anyone knows there weren't any examples of Indigenous people who rebelled against the conformity and who left the tribe to live a life alone and on an autonomous trajectory . If you are one to have personal ambition and aspirations then living the indigenous life is not likely to be suitable; it's going to be terribly stifling.

As a Native American you don't, for example, dream to build teepee colonies and rent them out at a profit and be a teepee landlord. You aren't trying to have a fancier pair of moccasins than others in the tribe. You aren't competing to have more blankets or better foods or a 4 story teepee with a fence around it built on higher ground than the rest in the tribe. You aren't going to sell your handmade bows and arrows at a 300% markup to your fellow tribe member. You don't put your name in bold letters on the top of your teepee. Native Americans don’t care about those metrics. In thousands and thousands of years on the continent the Native Americans never came to glorify the ego. There may have been a hierarchy but it didn’t translate to having a higher quality of life. The ubiquitous drone of competition is non existent in Native American life. Your life, though, is already mapped out from the moment you are born if you are a Native American. There is compliance and acceptance in this cultural framework. Ambition isn't rewarded or encouraged, or in many cases, even tolerated. Indigenous people live in boxes in the metaphorical sense. I'm not even commenting on whether this is good or bad necessarily, but I think it is fair to say that there are walls to living in a circular culture. There are walls and there is a top and bottom. You won't go lower than anyone else but you won't go discernibly higher.

European cultures, unlike indigenous cultures, are linear...they are compelled to advance. They are never satisfied with where they are at any given moment. They wouldn't embrace the Ram Dass phrase, "Be Here, Now". Linear cultures are always in a state of becoming. Whether by cultural tradition or by genetic mandate linear cultures are compelled to rapidly leave yesterday's advances behind in order to find the next invention or discovery. This is how we got to the Moon and back and this is why we have the iPhone 10, the polio vaccine, air conditioning, and the tuxedo. This is how we built the Chrysler building in New York City, the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1930, only to have it's height surpassed less than a year later by the Empire State building. That’s linear. "One upmanship" is a way of life. The Olympic credo "citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher, stronger) is the linear motto. It got us off horseback but some believe it will take us to a point of unsustainability. No one knows whether, in the final analysis, we will wish that we were more like an indigenous culture, more circular and less linear.

So, let's imagine that Albert Einstein was raised not by his family who gave birth to him in Ulm, Germany in 1879 but instead imagine that the Albert Einstein that we know and celebrate was, as a baby on his first day of life, transported to live and be raised by a Native American tribe. It was (the) Albert Einstein with all of his genetic soup in tact. He would have a different name, of course, and he would be raised totally differently, most likely by a communal form of parenting. Einstein would be dressed in the tribal garb and certainly, initially, he would live the life that was prescribed for him. To simplify things you could make Einstein look ethnically similar to others in the tribe, his new home.

Einstein would not grow up with the gadgets that he grew up with in Germany. He would not be
saturated in the culture of Germany and Europe and an industrialized society but, instead, he would be saturated in the Navajo culture with no technological framework to stand on. His world would be infinitely smaller in terms of academic and societal opportunities. The case could be made that opportunities of all kinds to stand out would be scarce.

What might Einstein, with a mind superior to most anyone in world history, have done when confronted with this cultural matrix. Remember, he looks like those in his tribe and he has no knowledge of any other culture. What might that mind and spirit, capable of such amazing intellectual creativity, have done under those gravitational forces? Might he have inspired his tribal members to greater advancements and discoveries? Might he have become as celebrated and fantastic as he became as the Albert Einstein we know? Might he have changed history?

Could we imagine a scenario where Einstein doesn't distinguish himself from others in his tribe? Can we imagine him simply blending into the landscape as a normal member of the tribe, indistinguishable, perhaps developing proficient bow and arrow skills or tracking skills. Would a mind such as his never reach its potential to ask, and try to answer the larger questions of the physical world? Would he have created a disturbance in the tribe? Would he have been unwilling to conform to the tribal standards? If he did become a normal and indistinguishable member of the tribe what would that say about the impacts of culture (nurture) on human behavior? We have countless examples of people born into cultural settings which they completely rejected and escaped. But, at the same time we know that the environment you are surrounded by can be incredibly powerful at inducing conformity. Let's not forget the behavior of the entire country of Germany during WWII? They all succumbed to the dark, prevailing wind.

It's hard to imagine a mind as complex as Einstein's and as restless being able to abide a life so circular and static. I have no idea how the scenario would have played out....but I can't imagine that the history books would have not known about "Einstein" if he were a Navajo or from any other culture or place in time, his genetic material intact. It was Einstein who, after leaving Germany for America in 1933 decided not to return due to Hitler's rise to power. It was also Einstein who, after the start of WWII, warned Roosevelt of the Germans capacity and intent to develop a nuclear weapons program and of the urgency of America to develop a nuclear program of it's own before the Germans.

These imaginative and brilliant minds attached to these linear cultures are responsible for amazing technological, creative, and medical breakthroughs. The same hypothetical could be imagined for Shakespeare or Picasso, Edison or Mozart. Minds like these don't sit still for very long. Minds as complex as these can bring about medical breakthroughs that can save lives, but they are also responsible for technology that can destroy the world in a slow death....or a very quick one.

A linear culture has the potential for magnificence....absolute magnificence. Where else could you witness the master strokes of a Frank Lloyd Wright, make “The Godfather” parts I and II, The Brooklyn Bridge....George Gershwin. Where else could you unlock the mysterious magic of aerodynamics.

A circular culture, if left alone, by definition, doesn't measure "potential". It will repeat it's pattern of existence generation after generation. The circular culture will never push the planet to extinction due to negligence or greed, or abuse. They will never kill a species to near extinction because they see themselves intertwined with that species. They see themselves as custodians of the earth, completely opposed to taming it or bringing it to it's knees. They never lose sight of the preciousness of nature.

The American story is so contradictory; a glaring dichotomy. It's fascinating to observe these two societies...as different as life and death, sharing this continent as they did for such a brief time. By virtue of their doctrines they couldn't coexist alongside one another. We know who wins. From the moment the Europeans landed on this "fresh, green breast of the New World" it was destined to be a zero sum game.

"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away
until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once
for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its
vanished trees, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a
transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby"

My opinions

Food for Thought..