They say you can find out the truth about a person by observing how they act when they think no one is watching. A slight remix of that maxim archaeologists might support suggests that you can find out the truth about a community by looking at their trash. “Oh, no, I only eat a breakfast burrito once a week,” your friend may airily announce, but their trash can’s pile of Gazebo receipts and greasy crumpled tin foil will testify to the alternative. What is hidden will be made manifest, we’re warned, or perhaps promised. But is there ‘truth’ about a culture? Is there ‘truth’ about a person? Culture is an elusive term, and its forces influence our lives in myriad ways, contributing to the formation of both yogurt and war. Our identities are strands that weave together to create the very fabric of what we call culture. Investigating your culture and the way you personally interact with it with new, diverse lenses is a way to expose truth about yourself and discover agency and obligation you may have never known you held.
If the people suddenly all left, I muse as I walk across campus to class in Nethery, archaeologists would have an interesting time deciphering the culture of Andrews. In studying the past of culture groups that still survive today, “ethnoarchaeologists study present-day cultures to see how patterns of daily life become transformed into an assemblage of fragmentary remains of the sort encountered by archaeologists in their excavations and surveys” (LaBianca, 1990; Hodder 1982; Schiffer 1976; Binford 1983), but what if there were no people here to learn from, and only material remains? What could one use to learn about who we were, what we did, what we believed in, and what we wanted?
As I notice while walking to class, if you’re meandering down any sidewalk on campus, you’ll likely see some litter. Nothing too nefarious, just little swirls of confetti composed of Gazebo receipts, vibrant wrappers of ridiculously-priced vending machine snacks, and fragments of masks accenting a celebration of the vibrant life we live here in our corner of southwest Michigan. I pick up a silver gum wrapper, and absently crush it and put it in my pocket to throw away later. It crinkles like the corners of smiling eyes above a mask. We chew gum here, apparently - Extra is the brand some individual recently enjoyed. Would a gum wrapper be as good a starting point as any for deciphering Andrews culture? Someone very hungry for clues would probably care about it, but is such a tiny bit of trash, such a tiny fragment of life, really important to understanding the whole? Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested “ ‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides, hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear” (Emerson, 1883). Perhaps we could augment this idea: ‘tis the good searcher that makes the good clue. The little scraps and shreds matter if you believe that they are important to the synergy of the whole. A bright orange concert ticket stub from last Sunday’s Andrews Composers concert broadcasts its neon color against the newly greening grass, and I pick up another clue to Andrews life, to Andrews culture. I suppose every individual bit of trash is archaeologically important to the culture of Andrews. If every bit of trash is archaeologically important, how much more important are the individual people!
To exist as a human means you exist in relation to other humans. Philosophers of various persuasions, and the worldviews of more sociocentric cultures, have suggested understanding the self as socially situated, and context dependent, rather than independent and objective. We grow into our humanity alongside each other, as Seyla Benhabib notes, “The human infant becomes a person through contingent processes of socialization, acquires language and reason, develops a sense of justice and autonomy, and becomes capable of projecting a narrative of which she is not only the author but the actor as well” (Benhabib, 1994). Each human, in their personal, complex web of identity, is an integral part of their culture - just as each piece of trash would be a useful archaeological clue about the culture from whence it came.
My humanity, along with my trash, are integral parts of Andrews’ culture. If I broaden my understanding of culture to embrace an awareness of my integral part in it, a strong sense of personal responsibility and ethical commitment cannot be far behind. You are important! Therefore, your actions are important, and we each should shade our choices with more layers of intentionality and care. I bend to pick up a sun-faded red Doritos bag, half buried in the dirt by the door. Napoleon Hill suggested, “If you cannot do great things yourself, remember that you may do small things in a great way” (Hill, 1928), a concept which flows harmoniously with the idea of each person being essential, each fragment being a clue and a part of the whole.
I enter Nethery, emptying my pockets into the trashcan by the door of the litter I picked up on my short walk. As I watch the bits and pieces flit through my fingers - the silver gum wrapper, the concert ticket stub, a piece of a torn surgical mask, a plastic bottle cap, a stepped-on-and-crushed mechanical pencil - I remember William Blake’s invitation, “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wildflower / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour” (Blake, 1803), and I consider the infinite complexity of experience that led these pieces of trash to this exact moment in time, to this exact interaction with me. I then turn to go to class, to interact with individuals, with a newfound respect for the wonder it is, that together, we make a culture.
Works Cited
Benhabib, Seyla. “In Defense of Universalism. Yet again! A Response to Critics of Situating the Self.” New German Critique, No. 62 (Spring - Summer, 1994), pp. 173-189.
Blake, William. “Auguries of Innocence.” Pickering Manuscript, 1803.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Hewitt Homeschooling Resources, (originally 1883).
Hill, Napoleon. The Law of Success. Tribeca Books, 1928.
LaBianca, Ø. Sedentarization and Nomadization. Andrews University Press, 1990.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.