THE RIGHT PERCEPTION OF WHAT CULTURE IS …..

General review

In today’s topic we are going to discuss a very wide issue which is related to culture. You all know that culture is a very big phenomenon which is really hard to describe. If we ask to several people what culture is then they will all have a completely different vision of this. Normally all the scholars agree that culture is something which is a set of morals and social heritage typical to a group of people which can actually have the same background. However culture is not something static but dynamic. This means that during some course of time some things change and some things remain unchanged. So the culture can also change, develop during some course of time or can mix up with the culture of other groups and in this case also change somehow and make a hybrid culture. So how does these changes occur? These changes are the results of people moving from one territory to another and bringing new traditions and new customs.

Another thing which is also really important to know is that actually culture is a very crucial factor which unites people. It is  not only about the customs, traditions, dances and music but it something much more than that. Culture first of all relies on spiritual values and norms that govern the people from inside. So it is all about the most important thing that can make the people understand each other, and that is the social morals, vision of life and same values. People who have completely different values cannot simply have the same culture. So what we have understood so far is that actually the basis of culture is much more than songs, music, dance or traditions but it is about the values that people carry and these values are the basis of all the things that exist in that very culture.

However, as we have already said, the history of mankind has been developed and transformed so much that it is very difficult to find any single pure culture nowadays. We can have idea on how the pure culture of that nation was like but it cannot be completely the same pure culture anymore because of globalization and new trends that took over the whole planet. Culture is a kind of determiner of what is right or wrong, beautiful and ugly, good or bad, acceptable and unacceptable etc.

There are so many different cultures in the world but it is actually very hard to determine which culture is good or bad as there is no objective truth about the cultural evaluation and no grade which can be applied in this case. Cultures are just different because people are different.

How the mechanism of culture works.

Now in order to understand the phenomenon of culture in the better way you have to make a mechanism in your head. There is a big culture which is the set of all the small cultures which are interrelated and exist in the formula of the big culture. So the culture of one group of people also includes many different types of cultures, like the culture of arts, the culture of gastronomy,  the culture of literature, of sports, of religion etc. One of the most important and crucial types of cultures in this list is of course the religious culture because the religion determines the key aspects of our lives and the set of norms and rules on the spiritual level that governs our lives.

It is the moral basis of our lives and that is the reason why we should take into consideration that actually religious culture is the closest to that of the big culture. So we can say that the religion that the person belongs to can tell us a lot about her vision of life and habits, customs, morals etc. all of other types of cultures can depend on the religious culture. However, there are some other types of cultures which do not have so much to do with the religion rather than geography and this types of culture usually are the arts, the literature etc.

Language is also another key type of culture which can tell a lot of things about the culture of the person and is one of the key things to determine the culture of the person. This is really one of the most crucial aspect and one of the most outstanding ones.

How the cultures have been globalized.

Culture is what makes one civilization differ from the other one and that is really how we should take it as. Culture is not something simple but it is a mix of the most different characteristics that identify not just one person but a group of people.  As we have already said it is really hard to cling to one culture nowadays and be loyal to it because the world and the countries have been transitioned so much that all the food, drinks, dances have been spread all over the world. Besides this,  because of some political issues religions have also been spread and changed. Some countries have adopted Islam and in this way changed their culture.

The topic of culture is a really complicated one and it is hard to understand. It is very difficult to identify one single person let alone the whole nation. Some nations are also known to have such close values in all the aspects that they are given one single name, for example the Slavic nations, the Scandinavians or the nations of the Caucasus.  Many scholars do not accept and do not like it that the nations and the cultures have been mixed up in such an intense way. However, what we shall do in reality is to understand that actually it is not bad if you can make your culture more modern and advanced. The time goes and the nations and their cultures should become more advances and develop. However what is really important is to be able to gain only the best of the new cultures and make your culture better and not to obtain all the bad things from other cultures and in this way what you have even worse because it is like going down and regression instead of progressing.

We hope that you have got a clear understanding of what culture is, because it is not just about the dance, food, music and looks, but it is based on something which is much more than that, the morals and values that people share.