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In nearly every aspect of culture, there is a “mainstream”, a movement that the majority of people follow, and counter-cultures, those movements that rebel against the mainstream for one reason or another. As I said in the article “Being and Growth“:

“Nonconformity is resistance to mindless autonomy, not simply rebelling against convention for its own sake; that is what I call reverse conformity. Living authentically is being aware of the movements of society and culture, the directions they’re taking, and making a conscious decision of whether to support those movements, or to go against them.”

There are many reports on the social and psychological reasons people conform, but it seems clear that going against the mainstream is analogous to swimming against the current. The path of least resistance, so to speak, is simply to allow oneself to be swept along with it. These decisions are not always conscious, as people have been conditioned to recognize the payoffs of conformity – such as social acceptance and a sense of relatedness – but also to associate resistance with invalidation. However, there is validation to be found in the counter-culture as well, amongst people who find common ground in their mutual distaste for the mainstream. Both kinds of behavior are equally disingenuous.

With culture being such a massive, fluctuating, multi-faceted entity with countless branches, it is almost inevitable that a person will be swept up by one movement or another. One of the major tenets of existential philosophy is that a person should be able to establish themselves apart from their cultural context. In “Being and Growth” I also describe children as “born existentialists”, saying that:

“Having yet to claim any identity, they [children] are open to all possibilities, and are continually actualizing their growth potential. Through enculturation and social assimilation, however, “self” as an individual often yields to “self” as defined by its niche within a societal or cultural framework.”

An important point here is that as a children, we lack a conscious understanding of our existential freedom, and often times we are unwittingly “imprinted” with culture. We learn early the punishments and rewards for subscribing to or resisting culture, internalize them, and out of this arises an identity. Sometimes, though, a person is punished by society for reasons beyond their control. In western culture in particular, standards of beauty and social propriety have been commercialized and marketed to us since birth; people are often ostracized for superficial reasons, such as physical appearance or “unorthodox” behavior. Many of these people, feeling invalidated, turn away from mainstream society to find their place, and often that means vehement rebellion out of spite.

For example, if a girl is made to believe she is unattractive, she may wear clothes or cosmetics that make her appearance even less desirable by mainstream standards. The reason for this is that it is much easier to handle invalidation for intentionally being “unattractive”, than it is to accept invalidation simply for being yourself. This behavior is inauthentic, because it still allows the person room to believe that “if they chose”, they could be accepted by the mainstream. What people need to realize is that the mainstream, despite comprising a social consensus, does not determine a person’s value. Wherever there are people who will reject a person, there are bound to be people who will accept them, and for being themselves. People should not hinge their sense of self-worth on the opinions of others so much as to change themselves whenever invalidation occurs.

With all of that said, the intention of this article is propose the idea of “Culture ZERO”, an existentialist approach to culture. Culture ZERO refers to the renunciation of all culture, a return to “nothingness” as existentialists call it. It is the ideal of freedom from cultural contexts, establishing oneself tabula rasa, not for its own sake, but to reinvent oneself along the lines of conscious choice. I acknowledge that this is an extremely difficult thing to do, particularly for people who have yet to even recognize their existential freedom. For this reason, there also varying degrees to which a person can re-establish themselves at “Culture ZERO”. Cultural paradigms such as “morality” (in its countless forms) are particularly hard to cast-off, and for practical reasons it isn’t even necessary to do so. The point is merely for one to recognize how they have been shaped by culture, not necessarily to resist it. Also, it is fine to consciously choose to subscribe to mainstream culture, just as it is fine to naturally gravitate towards a counter-culture trend. In either case, as long as a person is identifying with culture as an individual, and not as a follower, they are being authentic.

Choice itself, however, is a precarious thing; sometimes people “choose” to follow a movement consciously, not for its own sake, but because of its association with another movement. For example, at a party I attended recently, I noticed that a number of people seemed to have poor hygiene. Their hair was unkempt, their clothing was worn and tattered, and most noticeably, they had a prominent (and unpleasant) body odor. I asked a few people how it could be that so many people well…stunk. As it turns out, this was some form of counter-culture as a political statement against mainstream consumerism. They felt that by not using deodorant, by not washing their clothes or hair, that they were removing themselves from “the system”. The question that arose in my mind was: “What are they really accomplishing?” Are they really being true to themselves? Are they naturally predisposed to bad hygiene?

Just as I said with regards to morality, sometimes it simply isn’t practical to resist cultural paradigms. Perhaps it is true that the ideal of good hygiene has been stamped upon us, and strengthened to sustain the market for hygiene products. Good hygiene, however, is a natural evolution of culture, arising from our increasing understanding of being healthy, and exists independently of the market that advocates it. Being as though this bad hygiene trend was popular enough amongst the crowd at this party, it seemed to me to be another case of reverse conformity, and frankly, it was disgusting.

To understand how Culture ZERO works, consider a person who has been inundated with “hip-hop” culture. This may arise out of self-identification on the basis of race, as this culture is mostly associated with people who identify themselves as “black”. If this culture is the vernacular in this person’s environment, separation from it may lead not only to invalidation on superficial pretexts, but with respect to the more deep-seated concept of race, which may leave them scrutinizing their very identity. This is very unsettling, as I can attest, from personal experience.

However, at Culture ZERO, a person realizes that their identity is their own to shape, and that in spite of external judgment, they can exist in a way that is true to him or herself. This person may find themselves gravitating towards rock or metal music, “goth” or “emo” fashion trends, while at the same time speaking African-American Vernacular English. The whole ideal of Culture ZERO is that a person is free to pick and choose different elements from different sub-cultures as they see fit. They no longer have to buckle under social pressures or seek validation through conformity or reverse conformity.

The last important thing to understand about “Culture ZERO” is that it is a subjective movement. It is not a new trend. There can be no Culture ZERO labels or Culture ZERO products. At most, there could only be some kind of symbol showing that a person advocates the philosophy; from there it would be customizable, e.g. “Culture ZERO by {person’s name here}. There could and would be no market. After all, Culture ZERO is a state of mind, and how it unfolds varies on an individual level.

If Culture ZERO was achieved by individuals on a large scale, it would result in more responsible and authentic behavior amongst the mainstream, perhaps even so far as to eliminate the mainstream itself. Reverse conformists everywhere would no longer have a standard to rebel against, and would be free to express themselves in more authentic ways as well. As with many of my ideas, I realize that Culture ZERO is very idealistic and not likely to go too far beyond the few people who read this article. Still, I hope at least that it will spark new ways for people to think about themselves and their relationship to culture.

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