What does the word culture mean to you?
For example, do you immediately think of artistic productions of all kinds through history, or in terms of sociological and anthropological studies, or in terms of the way urban communities fit together, or in other ways entirely…?
Be very interested to hear all your individual reactions to this word.
A culture is a evolving system of collective behavior for continuing the clade through time.
Nothing less and nothing more.
..proffered jenny, presumptuously.
..proffered jenny, presumptuously.
Not presumptiously, tsuwm, I answered the man's question...did you?
Culture to me means language, theatre, poetry, literature, dance and music. I think to me it means anything that is the creation of an individual that helps connect and helps communicate socially. I remember as a kid being told that india (or the subcontinent) is very rich culturally. I clearly remember asking the question what is culture and being told "music, dance etc."; it still didn't mean much to a child. I think culture is an adult concept, because the need to connect to society and to other individuals is more in an adult than in a child.
PS: I wonder whether this post is going to have culturally rich attempts to share, connect and communicate or is one going to have to ignore or endure uncultured snide remarks and nastiness.
>>Nothing less and nothing more.
>I answered the man's question...did you?
nope: how could I possibly, given that?!
I would say culture is all that which is not nature. All different categories and various ways in which mankind left and leaves traces of cohabitation. Traditions, usages, changes, art,language,science, fashion, philosophy, the material world. All of it.
I'm sure tsomeone of your intellect can rise above The Truth once more, to enjoy tsome tcivilised conversation
Thanks for all contributions so far - anyone else putting a toe in the water?
A common feature so far seems to tend towards seeing culture in a sociological light - but does not the 'value-free' nature of that response militate against the ideals of Avy's artistic production, which presumably implies some cleaving* to moral or aesthetic intent..?
* Just for someone who loves the enantriodromic or Janusine :-)
>>Nothing less and nothing more.
>I answered the man's question...did you?
nope: how could I possibly, given that?!
By telling mav what
culture means to you, as jj told him what it means to her.
To me it means the collection of little yeastie-beasties in my yogurt.
My take on culture is that it cleaves to the aesthetic but cleaves from the religious (I do not know whether moral and religious are one and the same). I feel culture is expression of the experiences of life. If the mode of expression is common then culture can bind people together like nothing can ( case in point India and Pakistan). If expressing problems/experiences of life is culture then the extension of that - finding answers or solutions to the problems goes into the realms of religion. And nothing can divide people like religion. Those are just my thoughts on the subject.
Ps: and now I'm all talked out on the issue. Gasping for breathe.
what culture is, is the output of human thought and endeavor (even including frippery or frivolity, I suppose).
Sure thing, tsuwm, and the output of all of our endeavors has a singular function.
My bold font definition of Culture wasn't pomp. It was meant to delimit the term in a manner suitable for an informative discussion. As it were I failed to get purchase.
Hey, wait! I got another good idea! Be back in a minute...
Drat, I can't pull up the particulars so I'll just wing it:
(Continued on next box.)
Heh... -|) < <(never found out how you made that)
:¬ )
¬ = Option - l (That's Alt and a lowercase L)
In September a visiting professor at the University of Alabama anthropology department gave a talk on his digs in the Great Rift Valley in Africa with the immodest objective of assigning the few footprints and even fewer bones found there to the group Homo sapiens. A bold assertion in that the volcanic ash matrix they were in dated 1.3 million years BP.
But were they really our direct line ancestors? Much taller than the famous Lucy, and with brains almost as big as our own, a clincher was found in the physical evidence which showed that they had a Culture.
In the form of crude knives.
Sorry: Continued on next rock because this damn page won't scroll down so I can see exactly what I am saying.
While crude knives alone do not necessarily prove the exisitance of Culture (some monkeys are said to sharpen rocks to throw) these knives were relatively heavy and were found at three sites over thirty miles distant from the place of quarrying.
And Culture, either by language or gestures, selected a female (most likely) individual to carry the cutters and scrapers to the site of the kill.
An early manifestation of Culture.
Crows have been known to drop rocks on nuts to crack them.
I would say culture is all that which is not nature. This is wonderful! And accurate, I think.
Having taken several Sociology courses, my thinking turns to that def. first. There are so many different levels! (She said, going in the opposite direction from Branny's succinct generalization.) There is "British culture" and "American culture", for example. But wait! Is there really? Do all Britons have the same culture? No! (And, did I get you to think that I was going to leave that sweeping statement as a perfect target?
)
Everywhere, I think, there are sweeping likenesses (gender, religion, skin color, rural, urban, etc.) And also less-wide ones (education level, single parent households, homes with a person who requires constant care). But we can narrow cultures down, too: people who play clarinet, people who read King Lear
.
Every one in these (and other) cultural groups has at least something in common with the others in that group.
But can we take culture, like language, as specific to an individual? Not an idiolect but an idioculture?
Crows have been known to drop rocks on nuts to crack them.
Wich made me think:
A man domesticates a crow to be his nut-cracker, that's culture.
A crow who uses a nut-cracker to crack nuts is a cultured crow.
Hypothetically.
Crows have been known to drop rocks on nuts to crack them.
Crows have been known to put nuts under the wheels of cars stopped for red lights to crack them.
I'm a bit late joining this debate - sorry, looking the other way1
FWIW - I go along with Branny and Jackie to a great extent, but would add that the word "culture" has become broadened over the years since Matthew Arnold started the debate in 1867 (Culture and Anarchy Cirnhill Magazine)
It has become very contexturalised and can mean very different things to different people on different occasions. Which, I think, is very similar to Jackie's point.
One could define "Culture" as a learned responce, as opposed to a genetic responce, to situational conditions, except (at last, my chance to name-drop) E.O. Wilson would disagree. I chatted with "Ed"
twice last year and both times he opined that collective ant behavior could best be described as ant Culture.
The ant master of the world chooses his words with care: ' that collective ant behavior could best be described as ant Culture.' He did not say 'ís ant Culture'.
Till now we focussed on the sociological and anthropological part only.
Culture certainly had become a very stretchable word. As Jackie mentioned: each one his own culture, his own value in spite of the general similarities?
To Mavericks original question I still have no answer.
'What does the word culture mean to you?'
All I can say is: "a lot" (which isn't much)
:¬ )
The cake is back too! As for the Alt and lowercase L I just took the easy road : 'beg, steal or borrow' :¬ )
Happy birthday!
I often think of cognates and other etymologically-related words when asked to define a term or word. Latin cultus 'worship' is rather neutral WRT connotations, but English cult is pejorative and getting more pejus all the time. Cultus is the past passive participle of Latin colo, colere. 'to care for (someone or something); tend, till'. Thus agriculture (caring for fields) and horticulture (caring for gardens).
I think of culture, in its modern meaning, as the sum total of knowledge things produced by an ethnos, folk, or some other societal group. I don't think of language as culture, but a vehicle for it. (Oh, well; not very original or deep.)
:¬ )
The cake is back too!
Happy birthday!
Thank you!!
Yes, indeed, eta - Many Happies - have a R ight G ood day.. I shall raise a pint glas s to you ths evening.
Likewise, best for your next year.
Before moderator Maverick moderates this subject closed I'd like to add what Plato said, to wit...
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
Oh, yes, jenny--I meant to ask earlier: what is a clade, please?
Sure thing, Jackie.
A "clade" is a useful way to refer to any ancestral lifeform and all of it's descendents.
Definition:
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
n. A group of organisms, such as a species, whose members share homologous features derived from a common ancestor.
I like your definition. Language is indeed a vehicle. But we have cult-language and fashion words and word art. I would not single language out from the other things you mentioned. All through history words have been cherished and worshipped for their own sake.( poetry, illuminated manuscripts and such)
Branshe, I agree.
Rather than just a vehicle, the culture is the language. Desparate cultures will almost invariably evolve a language that identifies the in-group and best serves their particular needs.
Hey, maybe Maverick wasn't asking "What is Culture?" but just wanted a sampling of our mores and regionalisms.
the culture is the language
I suppose I was distinguishing between what Saussure calls language (langue) and speech (parole). The language itself is not culture, at least to me. Individual texts (or groups of them, i.e., literature) can be culture, but the abstract entity as a whole that is language is outside of culture. Don't know though; might be off the path.
Topic is 'Cultural values'. Question was: 'What does the word culture mean to you?.'
Cultural values are what a group or/and an individual values in social moral behaviour and in all cultural heritage and actual forms in kind.
The word culture just contains too much for a personal answer (imo. Maverick is silent; dear Maverick, I hereby would like to hear yóur answer to your question. (
if can be )
heh, no moderator me - nor power nor will to curtail any discussion. I'm just a monkey clever enough to find that lobbing a stone in the waterhole creates some pretty patterns and sometimes gets the other monkeys' interest...
Thanks for some thoughtful responses. I particularly found useful the associations you drew through analogous terns, nuncle. But all have been interesting.
My thoughts were stirred in this direction by a talking-heads radio show on the BBC recently. Melvyn Bragg has assembled some leading brains around a table and discusses the sequential evolution of this term including its sociological connotations, initially in a British cultural context but swiftly branching into less insular waters. I think the programmes may be available as a download - I shall go look in case anyone wants to sample their thoughtful expositions.
Yes, I think you can download each programme as an mp3
hereor are we supposed to say "you can gif it here"?!
and yet, you dasn't answer your own question?!
and yet, you dasn't answer your own question?!
heh, for you magister, ok....
I think there seemed a fair consensus of responses around the basic idea that culture is an expression of group thought and endeavour – all the actions of the tribe that are learned, assimilated, handed down (whatever the demographic boundary of the group we happen to be thinking about, as Jackie implies).
I’m not totally convinced by the clade concept, not so much because it doesn’t give a good description of the
outcomes in many cases but more because it seems to look through the wrong end of the lens: it implies a coherent reaching for some ulterior objective, yet clade membership could know nothing of such boundaries. If I am not clear there, what I mean is it is like the misinterpretation of Darwinian logic that suggests creatures somehow evolve towards some higher state, whereas what actually happens is variation, culled by exposure.
I note that Fong’s apparently facetious remark typically wears his learning lightly: yes, the way the bugs in the milk affect their environment and create certain visible outputs does tell us quite a bit about cultural normative influences, I think.
I like nuncle’s suggested nuance that it’s implicitly bound up with “caring for” something – this points me to the key point for my interest in culture, that it cannot be value neutral. Whilst we might tend to broad agreement that culture is a bit like the observable output of other life forms, it seems important to me that we are a reflective animal; that we don’t merely leave a blind cultural path like some sort of snail trail, but also have an important capacity to consider, choose, rationalise, communicate, and behave in socially co-operative ways that are vital components of the culture we create around us and leave to the generations that come after us.
To give another analogy, when a woman creates a piece of pottery for certain practical purposes we can see the product as a cultural artefact; but with how much richer meaning does that piece of pottery become endowed when it has accumulated several generations of iteration and elaboration, subjected each time to comparison, praise, study, copy, and so on? It seems to me that these processes over time lead to a higher form of cultural production, a more deeply meaningful reflection of what it is to be human – and thus (whether it’s a pot, a fabric, a picture, a piece of wrought metal, a song or a fragment of poetry) we come to produce aspects of culture that we recognise as ‘art’ rather than merely value-neutral articles of craft. Sure, all are aspects of culture: but not all, I think, are equal.
Who imparts or arbitrates the value scale is a whole nother thang…
That’s my not formally reasoned nor highly polished take on it so far anyway, and I will be interested to hear anything else all-y’all come up with, including if you like the broadcasts.
Well.. thank you. That wasn't short but it was sweet. Thanks for the link. I'll try to fit the
222 minutes total in with my work and maybe get back at this in a week or so.
"... when you talk about Dylan, he thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas. Whoever HE was. The man ain’t got no culture.”
It ain't me babe!
I gots many cultures (some of them treatable)
Well.. thank you. That wasn't short but it was sweet. Thanks for the link. I'll try to fit the
222 minutes total in with my work and maybe get back at this in a week or so.
You are of course welcome
I seem to remember it as half hour programmes, or was it 40 mins each, so it is susceptible to attack by stealth, pertickly for anyone suffering commutes of any kind.
Total aside: good ole BBC, making this kind of high intent programming freely available, eh? [/cannuck]
“Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.”
― Piet Hein
__________________________________________________
And presto-change-o we have Culture.
Boys, and Bran and Jackie, I do not relish the idea of me being the bitch in the back of the room screaming bloody murder, but no one here has yet indicated an understanding of the widely accepted mechanism behind the evolution of Culture and everything else, namely, determinism.
I would be less of a human being (and without balls) if I did not say so. So I do.
Dear bitch in the backroom, I have to take my time. I close off each day with one section of that BBC program. It's real interesting though my words end of this week may be equal to what I started with.
(one quote:"what distinguishes us from other primates is the fact that we developed a larger brain"; no one explains the why of and how that came to be. Must be something like the grain of sand in the oyster.( a beautiful accident) Nothing determined. I want to hear it out. Be seing you.
from the back of the room:
Objection, Your Honor! I know a little sometin' about billiards, and while it has a bit of determinism about it, I wouldn't go callin' it strictly deterministic (ever tried to predict reactions to English on the cue ball?) - not like, say, your computer is deterministic.
Oh,
Ya got trouble, my friend, right here,
I say, trouble right here in River City.
Why sure I'm a billiard player,
Certainly mighty proud I say
I'm always mighty proud to say it.
I consider that the hours I spend
With a cue in my hand are golden.
Help you cultivate horse sense
And a cool head and a keen eye.
Never take and try to give
An iron-clad leave to yourself
From a three-reail billiard shot?
But just as I say,
It takes judgement, brains, and maturity to score
In a balkline game,
I say that any boob kin take
And shove a ball in a pocket.
..and call it Culture.
from the back of the room:
Objection, Your Honor! I know a little sometin' about billiards, and while it has a bit of determinism about it, I wouldn't go callin' it strictly deterministic (ever tried to predict reactions to English on the cue ball?) - not like, say, your computer is deterministic.
Just because you can't predict what is going to happen doesn't mean it isn't deterministic. It just means that you are incapable of perceiving all the little factors that are doing the determining. And interesting you should contrast the determinicity of billiards to that of a computer. Anyone who has done any work with large computer programs will know how unpredictable something completely deterministic can be. That's why they have people debugging those programs. Even when they look like they're working nice and predictably they send out beta versions to crowd-source the bug hunting.
but it's the programmer's and their programs that are unpredictable, not the computers themselves - they can only (deterministically) do what they're told.
And the pool balls do what they're told. You just can't account for all the little irregularities.
I mentioned the use of English, complicating billiards. (Brits call this 'side'.) Side English complicates the game a lot, and makes many shots possible which would not be possible otherwise. The main effect of side English is the angle that the cue ball (and to a lesser extent, other balls) bounces off the rail. The second most important effect of side English is squirt; the cue ball does not go straight in the direction that the cue is pointing, it squirts off to the side a little. Left English makes the ball squirt to the right. The greater the side English, the greater the squirt. And squirt causes you to miss shots, and is the main reason that the pros tell you not to use side English unless you have a good reason. The third most important effect of side English is Throw, which is the effect that cue ball spin has on object balls. There is also accidental side English, caused by a bad stroke. And other balls gain side English, mainly by banking off rails (but also because of throw). The point being, this isn't just deterministic pool ball physics: it's very much about having a 'feel' for the game.
Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don’t – Lord Raglan
impeccable judgement, as always padre!
oh, is that a Bugatti at the
altar rail?
I just love these arguments about the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. There are just so many assumptions!
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
_____________________________________Georg C. Lichtenberg 1778
I call foul. Maverick, you bring a ringer to a honest game?
No matter; Father Steve, I think that the posters here are Determinists but don't know it. And they resent the inclusion of "their" words into the sausage mix that is Culture. Humph! Well, below are five statements. Agreeing with them makes you a Determinist and as a Determinist you will understand Culture.
Go...
1) Our brains are hard wired to operate in a cause and effect Universe.
2)Cause and effect requires Time to be progressive in order to function.
3) Words and thoughts are physical manifestations.
4) Atomic interactions are mechanical and determinate.
5) There is no number five statement.
Some wise man once opined that we don't have free will but we do have free won't.
I am reading David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, in which he explains that the conscious mind is just along for the ride. The first chapter, BTW, is titled There's Someone In My Head, But It's Not Me.
Is the book any good, Fong? Short tip for reading list welcomed.
Yeah,Faldage, please do give a report.
In the eighties I read a book entitled Your Little Man Inside (or something like that) and I have monitored his work ever since. Our relationship is ongoing but strange.
I'm loving it. Ever heard of the Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School?
There's a discussion going on about it on my Facebook page.
> my Facebook page
mommy, the scary man swearded at me :~
mav, I was just wishing you were on F-book: I wanted you to see a poster explaining Southern (U.S.) talk.
Dag nab it, I am lucky the above post looks okay: my relatively new laptop posted it without me consciously doing anything. I hope I will eventually learn not to let any part of my hands touch anywhere I'm not aware of. This thing is constantly doing things I don't expect it to.
Shh! The Faldage is talking to his Facebook friends.
Dag nab it, I am lucky the above post looks okay: my relatively new laptop posted it without me consciously doing anything. I hope I will eventually learn not to let any part of my hands touch anywhere I'm not aware of. This thing is constantly doing things I don't expect it to.
Use a USB mouse off your old computer and turn off the touchpad, which is usually something like Fn 8. Puts you back in control!
[shakes head in pity for the poor folks who don't understand the value of Facebook] [shrugs and goes on with life]
The people who paid top whack for Facebook shares in the float certainly had no idea of its lack of value ...
[shakes head in pity for the poor folks who don't understand the value of Facebook]
I notice the same sort of reaction and vehemence towards Facebook that earlier was leveled at Wikipedia, and before that at the Web itself. (It's hard to believe I've been using the web just shy of 19 years.) Before that it was ftp sites, bulletin boards, and in the beginning e-mail. I let the attentive reader extrapolate on her own about TV, radio, horseless carriages, and photography.
The people who paid top whack for Facebook shares in the float certainly had no idea of its lack of value ...
I guess it all depends on what you call value.
it all depends on what you call value.
"LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing." [Alan Perlis]
Hi! Back from retreat.
I've heard out the programs on the value of culture. Four of them nicely informative and the fifth (discussion) sooner deformative as discussions often tend to go.The evalution of the
value of culture today amusing as discussions can be and nondecisive as dicussions mostly are. ' Should culture be a public responsability and be subsidized or rather not'.
(money, money)
After all I think I can stick to my first common sense reactions:
1. Culture is all that isn't nature. (belonging to mankind in spite of organised ants and clever crows. Culture is all that men has materialized through observation, thought and imagination).
2. Culture means a lot to me. (all the available things, art, science, technology, humanities, sports, gardening, care. High culture, low culture, just culture}.
Mankind is not better than animalkind. But.
Much though I admire the peaceful cow in the meadow and the striped coat and agility of the tiger and the cuteness of the kitty and the bunny I would not want to be one of them.
Maybe, just maybe if I could come back as a bird.........or a dolphin.......then. Nah, I would miss
facebook and all the good artists and nice people in my group.
Welcome back, Branshe. Your thoughtful and direct answer to
"What does Culture mean to you?" is appreciated. Thank you.
But I'm curious: You said;
"Mankind is not better than animalkind. But...I would not want to be one of them."That seems contradictory. And will you define "better"?
And in what manner are snakes, bugs and microbes our equals too?
Also you wrote:
"... as amusing as discussions can be and nondecisive as discussions mostly are." Tell me, Branshe, what is the point of a discussion unless divergent opinions seek a mutual truth?
Interesting points, jj.
a) Are "snakes, bugs, microbes" animals? If so, then mankind are animals, too, so ipso facto cannot be "better than animalkind." Therefore, it would not be contradictory, surely, to not wish you be other than what you are. If, on the other hand, they are NOT animals, then it isn't contradictory at ll.
2)Whilst I agree with you that "the point of a discussion [is for] divergent opinions [to] seek a mutual truth", it doesn't follow that that aim is always - or ever - achieved. And my own experience confirms Branny's thought that " discussions can be ... nondecisive " although I'm not sure that they are "mostly" so. But it often is that, at the end of a discussion, one person's "truth" is still as "divergent" from the other's as when the discussion started!
Better is one of the words to express the relativity of values I admit; vague. I think my better in this case meant: better for the world at the point of creation where we are now (thinking big ) in fact we are a pretty destructive kind. From this point of vieuw I would call the ant and the herring better. Better to me means better for the whole, including our own interests. So I doubt if we are acting 'better' than animals.
Animals from huge to tiny are not our equals except that we are animals too and a pretty dominant species. For better or worse.
Rhuby answered the discussion part already. I called it 'mostly', since in spite of the zillions of discussions about everything around the world we do not seem to be able to make any progress on the big issues: peace, health, food, housing for all. Glad we have culture and nature to help us keep enjoying and admiring
and questioning life.
Edited by BranShea (3 seconds ago)
Some wise man once opined that we don't have free will but we do have free won't.
I am reading David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, in which he explains that the conscious mind is just along for the ride. The first chapter, BTW, is titled There's Someone In My Head, But It's Not Me.
Uh, Faldage. Grandma was slow but she was old. Where the heck is your book report?
Some wise man once opined that we don't have free will but we do have free won't.
I am reading David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, in which he explains that the conscious mind is just along for the ride. The first chapter, BTW, is titled There's Someone In My Head, But It's Not Me.
Uh, Faldage. Grandma was slow but she was old. Where the heck is your book report?
This book was very good, but it didn't have any horses in it and I like horses. I can only give it a 2 + .32i on a scale of i to π.
Kinda cute, Faldo. Pseudo-cryptic, but cute nontheless.
You don't synopsisize well, do you, Faldage?
Oh well, thanks for the fish.
> synopsisize well
There'll be fallout from
that one
Like the O Saki said, Maverick, "With Firstman's sowing Lastman did reap." The O Saki just forgot to add the BOOM!
Ah, Omar, sure he'd take a drink,
but he sure could synopsisize well.