Australia’s The Age offers an opinion on ”culture,” hoping to reconnect a word that has become disconnected from the discussion of daily life. The piece claims ”culture” — distinct from ”the arts” or ”being cultured” — as universal, an unavoidable stream of experiences, memories, expressions, and conversations, integral to every action in society:
We all carry culture within us; whether we wish to or not, it is as embedded in our minds as DNA is in our cell structure. Culture cannot be reduced to elemental terms, such as a painting on a wall or notes resounding in hall, but is a continuing series of experiences that affect every mind in a different way. In the end, culture is worth celebrating as a word, and as a condition not to be endured but used to educate and enliven.
But while culture is embedded in all of our lives, the article warns that we lose great opportunity if we let it spin unattended:
Back in time, when there was time, acquiring cultural knowledge was considered a rite of passage, not something special or abstruse. People learned of the basic structures of language and history; how civilisations were founded, developed and fell, and how they are remembered through their cultures. It is the chain that binds humans through epochs of change, and we loosen its links at our peril.
The word “culture” can be used descriptively or prescriptively. There is the way people in fact live and think; and there is the way people ought to live and think. Our culture is what it is. But how should it be? During a time of rapid change, what should we hang on to? What should we dump? What new things should we embrace? What should we reject? These are the difficult questions the Australian article raises for me — questions that are answered as often by tacit, unconscious agreement as by conscious choice.