What is Culture?
“Culture is a word for the 'way of life' of groups of people, meaning the way they do things. Different groups may have different cultures. A culture is passed on to the next generation by learning, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity. Culture is seen in people's writing, religion, music, clothes, cooking and in what they do.
“The concept of culture is very complicated, and the word has many meanings. The word 'culture' is most commonly used in three ways.
- Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture.
- An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior.
- The outlook, attitudes, values, morals, goals, and customs shared by a society.
“Most broadly, 'culture' includes all human phenomena which are not purely results of human genetics. The discipline which investigates cultures is called anthropology, though many other disciplines play a part”.
Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture
Where does culture come from? How is it created?
Traditionally, culture has often arisen in response to the environment and in an effort to survive. Indigenous tribal culture often revolved around a relationship with the natural world and with each other.
Tribes that have survived for hundreds or even thousands of years have developed cultures that contribute to that survival. Over time, people have observed what is helpful to survival and it has become a part of cultural beliefs, practices, values, morals, goals and customs.
Sometimes, people forget where their cultural beliefs and practices came from or why they exist. This can cause them to give up aspects of their culture that were important to survival, or it can cause them to cling to cultural beliefs that no longer help people to survive in a changing environment or world.
This is relevant to permaculture because when a culture has evolved in a way that steps away from the three ethics or the principles that allow humans to co-exist with nature in a way that perpetuates abundance for all, it is possible to redesign the elements of culture that may clash with caring for the future, for instance.
Modern culture has been largely created by multinational corporations and advertising. A core part of our culture and what motivates it is comfort and consumerism, for instance. This is a very different cultural worldview than the pioneers had a few generations ago.
Money has become a central part of our culture, around which everything else revolves and is dependent upon. That also was not the case even 2-3 generations ago, where people were often much more self-sufficient whether they had money or not.
This cultural viewpoint has become so dominant that many people find it hard to believe that there is any other possible way to live, or that we should live any other way. Yet, if we examine the roots of our cultural practices, and our values, morals, goals and customs even a couple of generations ago, they have drastically changed in many ways.
There have been other elements that have influenced our culture - what are they?
We may assume that because our culture was founded on the goals of freedom and human rights, that everything in our culture is positive as a result. But yet we’re very demonstrably destroying the natural world abundance that allowed us to build our modern culture, we’re not co-existing all that well in some ways, and we’re losing or have lost many of the viewpoints and abilities that allowed people to flourish and survive during times of change or environmental harshness.
What aspects of this culture have increased our survival potential?
What aspects have not?
This is where we, as designers of holistic systems, can really dive in and play. These are big questions that are debated within the permaculture community itself.
Some of this debate appears to be based on cultural assumptions rather than observation and interaction. It may take quite a lot of observation and interaction to answer them. The important thing is to ask the questions honestly, and be willing to look. This is the only way that many indigenous tribes could have come up with the deep understanding they gained about how to interact regeneratively with the land and each other over eons.
It can be challenging to change one’s cultural habits or viewpoints. Observing and using the design tools is one thing that can help, as a way to sort out which elements are valuable and which may be not only arbitrary but harmful. Working with like minded people can also be very helpful.
In the invisible structures section of the course, we’ll strive to give you some tools that can help you answer those questions within the framework of your own survival, the survival of humankind and the survival of other living things.