In your own words, how would you describe the concept of ‘culture’, as in, this person or this group of people have culture, or that this person is cultured?
To me, culture is characterized by a human pursuit of excellence and refinement, and it often involves self-restraint and control of lower instincts (sexual/emotional urges, impulsiveness, vulgarity, etc.). So to me, expressions like ‘Masai culture’ or ‘gay and lesbian culture’ are misnomers. They may have a unique social behavior…but culture? I do not see any culture in primitives who do not aspire to transcent their condition; and homosexual so called ‘culture’ is too permissive with lower instincts to be classified as culture.
To cultivate is to allow/cause to grow, but growing is simply a development, a change - in a particular way. In the typical case of ‘growing’, one might simply be referring to getting taller, but growing can be used for any way of developing - so can culture.
Culture is the way in which some ‘thing’/‘group of things’ has ‘grown’/‘collectively grown together’.
There is nothing implicit in the term about being specifically human, necessarily being a pursuit, involving self-restraint, or controlling lower instincts. These things are just incidental to a certain human culture that you have in mind - one that has actively and consciously pursued its development, and which is currently in a time that deems ‘self-restraint’ and ‘control of lower instincts’ to be integral to the current idea of growing/development/culture - to getting where it has ended up and what has enabled it to persist this far.
Where cultures are now hasn’t always been the case for them, they grew (changed) to get to this point, and it won’t necessarily always be the case.
The Masai have their own version of how they have grown and what they have grown into, western developed nations have a different one. We might think our growth has visited that of the Masai, but surpassed it - but how are we measuring this ‘betterness’? Have we really needed all our developments when other cultures have persisted/developed this far too without them?
Each culture will value their own customs as ‘best’ because of the history of success that precludes it proves it - and it will be the basis of their version of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘success’ and ‘failure’, ‘higher’ and ‘lower’.
What culture means is specific to each different culture, that has grown to where it has gotten to. In this way, it can also be applied to homosexuality and any discrete ‘group’ of people.
I’m new here, but already find this site interesting.
I’m just going to first touch on why homosexuality has been called a culture. Yes, I agree it’s more of a society; but in the past, it was more than just the sexuality, itself. Homosexuality was widely discriminated during the times of the 50s and 60s, and even illegal in many places (technically sodamy was, but it was a means of making homosexuality illegal, as they pretty-much never went after strait couples). During this time, homosexuals would band together, thus creating their own secluded society, or even ‘homosexual underworld’. But most of this isn’t true today, as many people in a society are willing to accept them, and thus they join again with the larger society, and no longer have the secluded one.
Technically speaking, culture is the universally held beliefs and costums of a society. To me, and I tend to be dark when it comes to society, culture is a compulsive attempt to group indeviduals into ideas that are of the majority. And from this, holds the illusion that their way is the ‘right’ or ‘best way’, and worse still, sometimes the ‘only way’. It pushes youths into various ideas without pondering why they do them. And if they do not abide by aspects of the culture, what people tend to believe ‘makes up what they are’, then they are either rebuked or told they are not one of them, or like them; even if the aspects of culture may be of little or no importance.
Are you familiar with strain theory? What you are espousing works pretty well along those lines, as well as the attitude you seem to have towards it.
Pandora,
I agree with you to a certain extent, though I think you are conflating homonyms. To say that an individual is cultured is different from describing the cultures of various groups. A cultured person is familiar with the “high culture” of the group they are in, whereas “culture” as a gross descriptor that Ahriman already eloquently described.
I do think a cultured person, as befitting their pursuit of high culture, ought be involved in self-cultivation which necessarily entails excellence and refinement. But what constitutes that excellence is a matter of some debate. Refinement is less up for debate but, ironically, is more varied as it is dependent upon the cultural narratives at any given location.