LogFAQs > #951233152

Blightzkrieg posted...

Culture is a reflection of how we behave, not the other way around. It's not something that exists until people behave a certain way.

It's both, honestly.

Culture forms out of our inherent behavior and needs, but then culture also goes on to shape the next generation in different ways. Each successful generation and the changing needs of society as a whole alters culture, which in turn then alters future generations, and so on.

It's why so many people today are obsessed with the idea of a "cutural war" (and even countless earlier civilizations and cultures would have understood the concept of propaganda and manipulating perception). If you can control how people think and force patterns of behavior onto them, you can then shape how their children understand the world, and thus how they will perpetuate that understanding.

The problem is, that means modern culture (if you can even agree on what "modern culture" IS) isn't necessarily a pure expression of our innate behavior, or even the best solution to problems that arose and still exist - it's a massive patchwork quilt of influence and counter-influence and deliberate social engineering and obsolete concepts that are no longer strictly necessary (or even useful). Culture is basically a toolkit for dealing with problems that stopped being an issue thousands of years ago and that lacks tools to cope with issues that became problems last week.
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