Culture Part I (Guest post by BowTiedBernard)
What is culture, and how do we look at it?
Special thank you to Apollo for having me here to talk about a piece of my background I don’t have the chance to cover - Culture Studies.
You could spend two months in an intensive course and barely cover a single country or region, so all this will do is get you primed for part II when we cover art - and for you to do some of this on your own if you move to another country or culture.
“People don’t live in the same world with different labels.
They live in different worlds.” - Sapir
Each culture classifies the world around them, and to understand a culture, we must learn HOW they categorize their world.
Categorization:
If you read my thread here, you have a head start on where we are going today.
I want you to take a piece of paper, or your notes app, and group the following words -
Shrub, Lion, Dust, Female, Angel, Orca, Cow, Mineral, Girl, Whale, Elk, Deity, Wraith, Rabbit, Flower, Male, Crab, Rakshasa, Ebola, Demon, Pepe the Frog, Ancestor, Alien
Group them in the way that makes the most sense.
Now that you’re done, if you grew up in the west, you likely categorized them like this.
Study this chart, does it make sense? How close was it to yours? We have a separate category for angels and demons from deities, and the natural world is broken into humans, animals, and nature, with a separate “fictional” category.
What about this chart?
How is it different? What is the categorization?
Masculine, feminine, nature, and the spiritual. Pepe the Frog makes no appearance, as there’s no real way to include him in this worldview of a hypothetical tribal community.
Is this worldview wrong? No, it’s a different way of viewing the world. We’ll come back to this at the end though. I have a few more comments, so hold the thoughts I have a feeling you may have.
Languages of Culture
If you want to understand a culture, you need to speak the language. The verbal language is just one form, similar to how 90% of our communication is non-verbal, there’s twelve languages to culture.
Verbal Language
Written Language
Objects in Three Dimensions
Numbers and Number Systems
Sounds - not words
Facial Expressions and Body Language
Touch
Use of physical space
Time
Two Dimensions - Pictures, drawings
Taste and Smell
Light and Color
Each of these languages are ways cultures can express their unique perspectives on the world. It gives you a glimpse into what is important and valued in their world.
We’ll go into detail on this in part II where I’ll give examples with art.
Observation
There’s no use in understanding the languages of culture unless you learn to observe.
Observation is different than seeing. Observation is active, and making sense of WHY things look the way they vs. passively taking in the fact something exists.
Start with some optical illusions to make you look closer.
How many legs does the elephant have?
How many faces do you see?
Do you see the elephant or the bull?
Autists’ Note: This might be one of the oldest optical illusions, it’s from a 12th Century Dravidian Temple in Southern India. Such intricate detail.
Simple Exercise
Based on these maps, what can you tell me about these cities? Who lives here, how old are they? What is important to the architects?
In order, these cities are - Rome, Chicago, and Amsterdam
Rome: The center of the city was careful planned out, centering around the great buildings like the Colosseum, the center was to be a triumphant hub with all major roads leading to the center like spokes on a wheel. The further you get from the city center, the more the roads mimic the natural pathways of the citizens, modified by the distance to daily activities and the terrain.
Chicago: This whole city looks planned from the top down, for ease of administration and navigation for new arrivals. The roads are squared, and do not follow the natural and most efficient pathways residents might prefer to take. Some of the earliest streets follow the river, the main line of transportation, but quickly adjust to the block and grid pattern see across most American modern cities.
Amsterdam: This city was built in sections centering around the main hub, not quite the grid pattern of Chicago or the spoke design of Rome. The main pathways follow the most efficient routes around the city, and buildings are wedged between them in blocks.
Wrap-Up: You should be able to start using these tools when viewing artwork, visiting a foreign location, or starting a new international arm of your 18-figure ecom business. If you learn HOW the world works, you can bend it to your will. Yes I’m serious, people do this. Perhaps another time.
Not everyone thinks like you, and you must use their language if you want to effectively communicate with them.
Parting Word: Before I break your worldview, especially if you’re like me and believe that there is one way the world works, breathe, you’re correct. Just because a culture lives in a world, doesn’t mean everything within that world matches reality. For example, a western modernist cleaves the spiritual and physical worlds in two, and never should the two comingle. While someone in India may realize that the two worlds heavily overlap. The Indian would be correct, and the modernist view is a flaw in Enlightenment thinking.
But just as a Hindu may believe in a limited amount of good in the universe, where personal happiness always comes at the expense of someone else somewhere in the universe, a westerner may believe in expanding good, that we have the ability to expand the number of good things available in the universe. The westerner would be correct.
Some views of cultures are clear cut right or wrong, like human sacrifice or cannibalism, while others aren’t as clear, like whether a society should be individualist or collectivist.
Next time, we’ll walk through how culture affects art, myths, stories, including real life crypto twitter examples.
Thanks for having me on Apollo.
— Bernard