The Power of Custom

Lois M. Scheel

1995

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletters, Oct. 1995, No. 140

Custom, a habitual course of action, is possibly one of the most intricate links in the thought chain that impedes the human being's ability to change. Even when the evidence for needed change strikes them where it hurts most, people can't imagine a way of life other than the one they've always known.

Because all citizens are not allowed their fair share of their country's natural resources, even as their birthright in the land of their birth, we have poverty in the midst of plenty, and this has been the custom for eons. The Native Americans saw the importance of sharing the land and its resources, but they were called savages. What could be more savage than allowing people to go hungry in a supermarket full of food. Or forcing them to sleep in the streets in the midst of empty, unused buildings. Before the arrival of the white people on this continent, Native Americans gave their people a measure of security from birth to death. Today we have the technological means to provide security for all North Americans, but instead we cling to the European custom brought over here by our ancestors of ``earning our bread by the sweat of our brow'', or we don't get any bread.

Now there is this jobless thing that has been going on for a lot longer than most people realize. Downsizing is quite a popular sport with corporations lately. Almost every day the news media talks about some company giving employees permanent layoffs. Yet politicians make nonsensical promises, such as finding jobs for everyone. They know there aren't enough jobs out there. The people know it, but here we run into custom again. For centuries people worked. Many of them worked independently on farms, or as the village blacksmith, or fishing, sailing -- on some kind of a job anyway. Others, who didn't own land, worked in the fields for those who did own land. But almost everyone worked. Naturally, those who held the power over those who worked were the most vociferous in touting the virtue of work. A person felt guilty if he wasn't working at something because he was made to feel guilty, and this custom hasn't changed today. Even though jobs are becoming a thing of the past; even though machines can do the work faster and better -- instead of our government providing security for displaced workers, they are made to feel guilty if they don't have a job, as though machine-induced unemployment is their fault, and without these jobs, many must give up their custom of eating regularly. Politicians continue to beat the work ethic drum, especially when it comes to those ``welfare deadbeats'', single mothers in particular. But if a single mother does work, such as Marcia Clark, prosecution attorney in the O.J. Simpson trial, she is accused of neglecting her children. So here we have our politicians contradicting themselves. Does this surprise anyone? Hardly; it seems to be an accepted custom that undoubtedly has been with us ever since the advent of politics.

And speaking of politicians -- aren't they, who for the most part are lawyers and businessmen, an anachronism in an age of technological intelligence? In a complex situation, shouldn't we have people leading our country who are appointed for their qualifications? Instead the custom is to encourage an unenlightened populace to vote for their choice of leaders based on their charisma, impossible to keep promises, and whether they are a democrat or a republican. In every presidential election year, an independent party threatens to bring about change. If an independent party did succeed in getting elected, the only noticeable change would be new faces, new titles, but still the same old politics.

Large families were popular in the past so the children could help on the farm or with other family projects, or take care of their parents in their ``golden'' years. Since mortality rates in children ran high, the more offspring produced, the better the parents' chances of some surviving to grow up to carry on family customs: extend the family farm; take over their father's practice in medicine, or sailing, or logging.... Now machines have practically obliterated the small farmer along with other small business entrepreneurs who are becoming as endangered a species as the northern spotted owl. Big farm operations and other large corporations are resorting to technology to get the work done. Yet some people are producing large families anyway. Some, who already have children of their own, even take fertility drugs. What are we going to do with all these people when jobs become even more scarce and our natural resources, which most people take for granted, run out? The pro-life people may not realize it, but they are working toward the elimination of all life forms from overpopulation and the toll it takes on these resources.

We've always needed money to survive, and to have money we've needed jobs. Jobs are on the way out and so is purchasing power, and some of us have been so accustomed to both. This breeds a volatile situation. The violent revolution already under way on the streets of large cities and spreading to smaller communities as well is anything but a quiet one, and it will get noisier and noisier. One wonders how anyone could be so naive as to not see that a shortage of jobs, which results in a shortage of purchasing power, plus created food shortages in a land of plenty can't help but build a climate of crime. How many of us would watch our family members starve rather than disobey the law if that were the only way to survive?

Many people don't realize that we are headed toward a cashless society anyway: checking accounts, direct deposit, credit cards, and now to expedite financial matters, a check-guarantee card that allows any business to withdraw the amount of your bill directly from your bank account. Saves the time and cost of writing a check. Doesn't this easy access to credit (or ``debt'') make you wonder what the money system is all about? (Shouldn't we have some kind of measurement instead?) And these new cashless methods sort of upset old customs regarding money; some people still prefer having that cash in hand; they want to feel it, fondle it, worship it.

Now where does custom fit in concerning our health? In the earlier part of this century, few people patronized doctors and hospitals unless they were dragged in feet first. Home remedies were good enough, and who is to say they weren't better in many ways. Some people were so poor they didn't even have chickens or eggs or other farm produce with which to pay their medical bills, but they still got help if they needed it. Can you imagine a physician today accepting such payment? Why, with what the medical profession charges, a physician could buy the family farm for the price of one serious illness. And probably the only doctor in recent history who still made house calls, and up to age 87 and perhaps a little beyond, was Dr. Louis J. Camuti, a cat veterinarian in New York who wrote a book in 1980 called, All My Patients Are Under The Bed. He devoted as much time to the pets' owners as he did to the pets. Just think what doctors are missing by not making house calls: coffee and homemade apple pie, and on special occasions a lifting of the spirits from that cherished bottle, and closeness with the patient and the patient's family. Ah, that was the custom. Today media health-scare tactics have turned us into a nation of hypochondriacs and doctor-induced pill poppers.

The desire to hang onto custom is on the march in other ways. People are leaving crowded areas in search of the once customary quiet life many of them have only read about. The people who are accustomed to a quieter life are losing it to this march of escaping habitat changers. ``There goes the neighborhood'' is a phrase that has taken on new meaning. California is being inundated by people from South America. Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana are being invaded by Californians, who in their effort to escape various problems back home are merely helping to create these same problems somewhere else. If we erased border lines and worked together, sharing resources, who knows! Perhaps, for instance, those South Americans would rather stay home if they just had a piece of the action. They don't seek out the United States because they love the climate here. They are searching for a better life. Who can blame them.

And what about border lines, state, county, and even national! Why do we continue to honor these antiquated demarcations? Rivers, forests and meadows don't recognize them. State and county lines were drawn up to accommodate the equestrian and foot-power era due to destinations that took hours, even days to reach, distances that no longer pose a problem since the advent of modern transportation. By eliminating these customary borders, we could also eliminate hundreds of unnecessary governments within governments. (Oh, oh, more unemployment.) And since all of nature is connected, we could -- and should -- work together ecologically as one continent.

Those who dream of going back to basics cling to obsolete customs and a lost past. Our latest, modern Luddite, the Unabomber, is determined to go back to basics and take everyone connected with the advancement of technology with him, even if he has to blow them up (with modern technology) to accomplish his ends. The power of custom too often obfuscates clear thinking.