Cultural values | Q&A about words

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#208727 - 01/04/13 07:45 PM Re: Cultural values [Re: zmjezhd]
jenny jenny veteran Registered: 06/05/10 Posts: 1554 Loc: Lower Aberdeen, Mississippi	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.
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#208728 - 01/04/13 11:11 PM Re: Cultural values [Re: jenny jenny]
Jackie Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/15/00 Posts: 11613 Loc: Louisville, Kentucky	Oh, yes, jenny--I meant to ask earlier: what is a clade, please?
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#208731 - 01/05/13 03:14 AM Re: Cultural values [Re: Jackie]
jenny jenny veteran Registered: 06/05/10 Posts: 1554 Loc: Lower Aberdeen, Mississippi	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.
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#208732 - 01/05/13 03:15 AM Re: Cultural values [Re: zmjezhd]
BranShea Carpal Tunnel Registered: 06/23/06 Posts: 5295 Loc: Netherlands, the Hague	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)
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#208736 - 01/05/13 12:07 PM Re: Cultural values [Re: BranShea]
jenny jenny veteran Registered: 06/05/10 Posts: 1554 Loc: Lower Aberdeen, Mississippi	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.
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#208739 - 01/05/13 12:54 PM Re: Cultural values [Re: jenny jenny]
zmjezhd Carpal Tunnel Registered: 08/13/05 Posts: 3290 Loc: R'lyeh	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. _________________________ Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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#208752 - 01/06/13 08:17 AM Re: Cultural values [Re: jenny jenny]
BranShea Carpal Tunnel Registered: 06/23/06 Posts: 5295 Loc: Netherlands, the Hague	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 )
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#208753 - 01/06/13 08:24 AM Re: Cultural values [Re: jenny jenny]
maverick Carpal Tunnel Registered: 09/15/00 Posts: 4757	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 here or are we supposed to say "you can gif it here"?! Edited by maverick (01/06/13 08:28 AM)
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#208756 - 01/06/13 11:26 AM Re: Cultural values [Re: maverick]
tsuwm Carpal Tunnel Registered: 04/03/00 Posts: 10538 Loc: this too shall pass	and yet, you dasn't answer your own question?!
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#208761 - 01/06/13 05:05 PM Re: Cultural values [Re: tsuwm]
maverick Carpal Tunnel Registered: 09/15/00 Posts: 4757	Originally Posted By: tsuwm 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.
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