What is Culture?

I asked a friend: “What is culture?” and he replied: “Dude, it’s like asking people what is creativity, or what is art.”

That’s precisely the point. I’m constantly surrounded by people talking about culture, by work involved with culture and by some sort of lifestyle that embraces culture, but really, what is culture?

By definition, culture is a collective pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that characterizes into a symbolic thought and social learning, or a shared set of common attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a person, group and society…but the question is, do we shape culture, or does culture shape us?

Perhaps it is both. Castilian Spanish is known for it’s lisp-like pronunciation and is believed that it originated from King Ferdinand of Spain who was born with a lisp, so his people began talking like him, which throughout history shaped the way the people of northern region of Spain today speak. Despite the story being completely false, it lived on as legend told by even ‘cultured’ native Spanish speaker.

Perhaps it is created by an individual. There is this man called Confucian, whose complex system of moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought influenced most of the history and shaped the society of East Asia. He has taught that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavor especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. His teachings can be applied to an individual, a group or an entire community.

Perhaps it started off as a trend that later became culture. The Chinese word 囧 (pronounced Jiong) became popular in late 2007 when netizens began using it as an ideographic emoticon to express ideas or feelings of annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, scorn, in response to silliness because of the character’s resemblance to a person’s face. The word became relevant in Chinese youth’s lives, it had a ‘cultural’ impact in the way their mindset is shaped and how their thoughts are expressed.

So at the end of the day, is culture man-made? Then is it arguable that animals don’t have culture? (Thanks to my co-worker who allowed me to question him as he strongly believes that animals don’t have culture)

What are the elements of culture in today’s definition? Is it art, language, traditional values shaped by geographical locations?

Already frustrated with this, I came upon the term High Culture, which by wikipedia’s definition, means an excellence in taste for fine art that is held in the highest esteem…or in other words a culture that is only cultivated by elites. What a load of bull. I find it very unfair to classify/define people by their backgrounds and their level of knowledge in all academic aspects. A person without knowledge doesn’t mean they don’t have culture.

I guess, in a broader sense, culture is part of life which leads to it being a way of life, and that it’s true it can be shaped by people and at the same time shape people.

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