Culture

What does it mean culture, and why it is or it is not important?

First, I was wondering how many aspects of culture we can find? The culture of nation, culture of a company, culture of a religion, culture of an ancient heritage, culture of civilization or culture of intelligence etc...

On one hand culture is important as it gives structure to a society how to behave, where to find your place and your task to fulfill the need of the whole.

On the other hand it can easily lead to automatization and dependency. People follow orders for the sake of conformity without even questioning the order's moral quality.

Speaking about reporting-culture for example, which was so important back in the Communism, we can see how it remained active in lots of company-policy by promoting people who bring information about their mates. While reporting culture can be beneficial to a company as far as it is for safety reason and the report addresses general query and does not pointing fingers to anyone.

The quality of the reporting culture also depends on the structure of the society if it is based on individualism or community as operating unit.

Moving towards and speaking about culture of nations as a firm base of the society, it gives firm boundaries and a safe place for the ones inside the nation with a strict condition to comply. It connects the individuals who feel belong to it, but it also separates the ones who are considered outsider.

The content of each culture gives specific values to the community and also it can declare certain kind of social behavior unwanted.

It can be seen how certain people driven by their cultural belief, are ready to punish others just because according to their belief system/ culture, the behavior of the certain individual is not accepted by their culture.

Also we can speak about ancient cultures which hardly exists and seem to become extinct. It could have great amount of wisdom and value inside (like Maya or Atlantis) while history put them to an end. If we take time to rediscover it in deep we will see that all the high-values come with a price, and the once fruitful political/moral system required extremely high sacrifices on the other side.

So what is the solution in the end?

As every matter on Earth has positive and negative sides, I believe culture works for its purpose as far it remains simple guidance for the individuals in a respected place to be acknowledged. I believe it depends on the personality and much more the development level of the personality how to deal with the cultural influences and how much he/she aware of the impact of the cultural effect to his/her own life and behavior.

Certain kind of people have to have firm rules to follow in order to operate. But I believe there is a point in a scale of development when the individual starts to ask questions and determines their own needs and requirements outside the collective. And there is a level when the economical necessity wont be the only condition to determine their choice but also, some kind of moral requirement calls in and starts to urge for a personal set of boundaries.

I believe studying ancient and other cultures including their history, roots, operations, morals and values, helps to give a deeper understanding to see the big picture, to see how the culture plays its rule inside the community. Understanding its general operation it leads us not only question its moral but also it gives the unique skills to separate their parts and investigate deeper.

After all we are visitor here to observe and experience life in as many aspects as we can. So lets investigate as much as we can, take it into parts and put it together again, and go forward on our own destiny with the values we saw and learnt from it.

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