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Re: What is culture?

#2
Without going into the why of this question, here's a proposed definition to beat up on: "culture" is the name given to a set of pervasive and persistent belief and behavior patterns in a large number of geographically adjacent people.

"A culture" is thus such a group of people.

Actually, for me "culture" is pretty near synonymous with Carroll Quigley's definition of a "society." He defines a society as a group of persons "whose patterns serve to satisfy most of the members basic needs, with the result that the members of a society have most of their relationships with each other, and their mutual, reciprocal adjustments while doing so make a society an integrative social aggregate." I'm inclined to think that the patterns he references are, basically, culture.

Quigley then builds on this definition to talk about civilizations. A good summary of this can be found in his paper, "General Crises in Civilizations" from 1972 (from which I took his definition above). His book The Evolution of Civilizations contains a much fuller treatment, including a more detailed look at societies and the forms that define them.

Again, though, this is just a working suggestion to try to help start the conversation. I'd be interested in reading other proposed definitions (and possibly not even disagreeing with them... out loud :D).
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Re: What is culture?

#4
Katawa wrote:What is it?
Once you get tired of definitions, look inside a used Petri dish.
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
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Re: What is culture?

#10
Grumblesaur wrote:
ThymineC wrote:A highly advanced and progressive anarcho-socialist post-scarcity society composed of a number of species from all around the galaxy.
Isn't that the Culture and not culture?
R.I.P.
That which is not dead may eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.

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