Random Thoughts on the Nature of Culture

by
Juan C. Moreno
Office of Diversity and Inclusion
University of Minnesota Extension Service

“No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.” --M. Gandhi

“Beware the single truth. Inside it, anywhere on Earth, there is a loaded gun pointed straight at your head.”
--Bill Holm

“Nature allows us to look alike and relate. Education allows us to be different and separate.” --Confucius

“Authenticity transcends culture.”

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you;
they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.” --Wade Davis

“Finding the right answer is only the beginning. There are other right answers if one can change one’s
perspective.” --Judy Wellington

1. Trying to define culture is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
2. Because of the complexity embodied by the term “culture,” we often revert to poetry, metaphor, and storytelling in order to grasp the multiple strands of meaning buried deeply within the subject matter.
3. Lewis Mehl, a philosopher, defines culture in the following manner: “Culture is the landscape through which the river of life flows.”
4. It is also said that culture is like the blueprint that determines the way individuals think (knowledge), feel (belief), and behave (action). As a consequence, authentic culture change must consider these elements: winning the minds, touching the hearts, changing the habits and—from a holistic perspective—stirring the spirits.
5. In 1982 there were 154 definitions for the term Culture in the Social Sciences literature.
6. Unlike matter which is composed of various states such as: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma; the human condition is made up of only two distinct states: separate (individual) and together (group). Also, unlike matter, which can manifest itself in an “either/or” relationship vis-à-vis any of its states, the human condition always manifests itself in a “both/and” relationship in regards to its two states.
7. Culture, like community and communication, resides at the level of group (together).
8. Our uniqueness contributes to our sense of individuality and separateness while our social imperative contributes to our sense of community and belonging. In order to survive and thrive, we need both diversity (individuality and differences) and community (togetherness and attachment).
9. How groups handle the eternal tension between separateness (individuality) and togetherness (group) becomes a major ‘cultural’ difference among them.
10. Individualistic cultures tend to be more ‘economically’ wealthy than collectivist cultures. Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, tend to be more hospitable than individualistic cultures. No culture has a monopoly on virtue, truth, contentment, happiness, and wisdom.
11. Humans belong to a multiplicity of groups—from the family at one extreme, to the planet at the other.
12. All human groups generate the phenomenon of culture.
13. Every human encounter is, therefore, a multicultural encounter.
14. Culture is learned behavior, not hereditary or genetic.
15. Culture is the acquired knowledge (not indigenous or instinctual) that groups use in order to interpret the world around them, to generate social behavior, and to decipher the behavior of others.
16. Culture is thought to be generated only by members of the species called Homo Sapiens. This is perhaps because, until recently, we have been unable to communicate meaningfully with other members of the animal kingdom.
17. Culture is everything that is not a part of nature. As an example, a tree is part of the natural world whereas a wooden chair, made from the tree, is part of the multiple inventions and manifestations of culture. Paradoxically, however, since culture is part of the grandeur of creation, it is not, in that sense, apart from nature.
18. Communication, particularly language, is the foundation of culture. Language labels, creates, maintains, and transforms culture. Communication is the creation of “shared meaning.” The terms “shared meaning” are code words for culture.
19. Communication also generates feeling. Since communication is the foundation upon which we build the phenomenon of culture, culture also generates strong feelings (“fire in the belly”) since it answers the multiple and central questions of life for a group of people.
20. We are rapidly developing the capacity to communicate globally. Approximately 1-2% of the planet’s people have access to cyberspace and virtual reality. When we reach approximately 2,500 planetarily understood symbols; about 30% of the world’s inhabitants will be able to build a planetary culture. We are well on our way towards reaching that goal. The rest of the world’s people (nearly 70%) can barely read and write.
21. Culture is never static. It is always a dynamic and evolving process (i.e., attitudes towards smoking in our culture). Because language changes, so does culture (i.e., the term “groovy”).
22. Culture is comprised of overt as well as covert dimensions. Nearly 90% of cultural information is covert. This is also known as “deep culture,” worldview, or cosmology. Most of us are unaware of our own worldview, much less that of others. As a consequence, the journey towards cultural competence begins with a deep understanding of our own worldview and cosmology.
23. Covert cultural information is not readily accessible through the traditional and explicit pathways for learning, namely the senses and reason. Covert cultural information is generally accessed through more tacit pathways such as hunches, feelings, emotion, body, relationship, and intuition.
24. Culture is like magic, what we are able to access through the senses is not always the totality what is really going on under the surface.
25. We are all trapped and imprisoned within our own cultural contexts—like a fish unable to understand the concept of water except when out of the pond. Because we are deeply enmeshed within our multiple cultures, this situation makes the concept of culture a difficult one to understand. It is only in those rare moments when we are able step out of our familiar surroundings that we—like the fish—realize how profoundly influenced by the phenomenon of culture we really are.
26. Culture acts as the filter, through which we see and understand the world. Culture defines the HOW we come to see and understand reality which, in turn, influences the WHAT we see in reality and in the world around us.
27. Cultures are inherently self-centered because members of a particular group are generally unable to shed their own cultural wellsprings and filters and completely perceive reality from another’s point of view (i.e., one person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist fighter). The ancient Egyptian word for Egyptian simply means “human.” In the Chinese language, China literally means “the Middle Kingdom” or the center of the universe. The Incas called their capital city Cuzco that in Quichua, the ancient language of the Incas, means literally “bellybutton” or the center of the earth.
28. Human oppression is deeply embedded within the concept of culture because patterns of domination and subordination make up the very fabric of covert cultural information (deep culture). In this context, just as the practice of goodness is universal, so is the practice of evil.
29. Every culture assigns privilege (unearned advantages) or prejudice (unearned disadvantages) to various aspects of human experience and human difference.
30. The concept of cultural relativity raises significant moral and ethical questions in close encounters of the cultural kind. It is as difficult to find any defensible justification for the cultural practice of female clitoridectomy (female circumcision) as it is for the cultural practice of male circumcision.
31. From the early moments of history when we began to intermingle with others outside our familiar clans and tribes, the human animal has been in the business of engaging in continuous intercultural encounters. These encounters have accelerated to a frantic pace on planet earth at the beginning of the new millennium, propelled in large measure by significant advances in transportation and communication technologies.
32. The difficulty with being thrust into a global village is that we do not yet know how to live like villagers. There are too many of “us” who do not want to live with “them.” If we want to coexist, we must develop into something like a single human family. For this, we must become familiar with each other.
33. Close encounters of the cultural kind have always led to varying degrees of influence of one group’s worldview over another’s. This trend continues today unabated. A common term used throughout the world for this phenomenon is “cultural imperialism.”
34. How far an individual is able to understand as well as “travel” down the pathways of the groups to which we belong—from the family, the clan, the tribe, and the village to the nation, the continent, and the planet—is fairly indicative of that individual’s conservative or liberal ideology. A key quality of seasoned universal communicators is their unceasing willingness to reach out across the boundaries of “otherness” and venture courageously into “alien” territory.
35. Fear and prejudice have always prevented us from actively pursuing encounters with “the other.” The familiar and close to home has continually been a source of comfort and security. Dragons, real as well as imagined, have always lived just beyond the horizon, in someone else’s neighborhood.
36. The cultural practice of defining certain people as “others” in relation to one’s own group may be as old as humanity itself. In order to solidify a sense of group identity, groups have regularly attempted to dehumanize the “others” in the process. The Greek word for non-Greeks is barbaroi, or “barbarian.” In addition, throughout history, groups have often used religion to interpret a reality in which “we” are “God’s” people and “they” are “God’s” enemies, and ours as well.
37. A central challenge for the human species at the beginning of the new millennium revolves around how to make the further circles of groups beyond the self, as comfortable and familiar as the family and the clan. We need to develop the language—the myth, magic, meaning, and metaphor—that places the familiar within the unfamiliar. The term “global village” is a very good beginning in this regard.
38. Our evolutionary legacy has not prepared us well to adequately cope with the increasing frequency and speed of human encounters. We may not even be genetically wired for this advancing reality. For millennia we lived nomadic lives accompanied, for the most part, by other members of our particular clans and tribes. Even the concept of village is, in historic terms, a very recent development—only about three thousand years old.
39. For most of our history, human population growth also was kept in check by lower rates of life expectancy, higher rates of infant mortality, frequent wars, famines, conflicts, natural disasters, conquests, and disease.
40. In 1798, in his Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus observed that in nature plants and animals produce far more offspring than can survive, and that humans too are capable of overproducing if left unchecked. Malthus concluded that unless family size was regulated, the misery of famine would become a global epidemic and eventually consume humans. Today, the Malthusian predictions regarding population growth are at our doorstep. There is no longer enough room on planet earth for us to be able to hide from one another.
41. Culture, along with Biology and History, is a crucial element in the formation of our sense of identity.
42. In the development of our sense of identity, Biology gives us the raw substance (earth) with which to work. History contributes the form (water) as it shapes and chisels us as a result of our experience. Culture, which emanates out of our multiple relationships (fire), provides us with the mental models for interpreting the world around us. A fourth element, spirit (wind), less understood but nevertheless present, combines with the others to give purpose, definition, meaning, transcendence, integration, and wholeness to our journeys on this earth.
43. Spirit is an integrating force in the universe. Spirit moves us towards wholeness with greater peace, passion, and purpose. Like the wind, spirit has a tendency to find its way through the nicks and crannies of life in order to make its presence known and felt in places where one least expects it. In settings where the wind reaches its greatest chaos and turbulence, it also reaches its greatest stillness. Paradoxically, the eye of the storm is also a dwelling place of peace and tranquil beauty.
44. The capacity to suspend judgment and disbelief as well as the aptitude for patience and“emptiness” are perhaps the most important skills one needs in order to learn and unlearn as we enter into the realms of another culture. Emptiness is a concept derived from Zen Buddhism that also translates as “open mindedness.” It implies developing the capacity for the openness of a child, rather than pursuing conclusions immediately, as it would be more natural. It may very well be that the finest lesson we can learn from this process is that, within cultures, there are no greater depravities than bigotry and prejudice and no greater virtues than tolerance and compassion.

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