Cultural questions

For our VOC II course, the group which has taken on the role of creating an online course on Global and Multicultural Activities, has issued the task of asking us to answer the following two questions:

1. What is meant by the word "culture"?

It goes without saying that this is an incredibly difficult question to answer. And yet, I said it.

From my own perspective, I ask myself, what the connotations are of that word? I made a mind map of what came to me regarding this issue. Here's what it looked like:

Now, it's pretty rough (using Paint to it's maximum capabilities), but some things become apparent in light of this exercise:

a) I place some importance on specifying the various art forms that I see as forming 'culture', which suggests that to me, art is significant in terms of defining culture.

b) The other thing which sticks out is the distinction between personal and national history. For me, one's culture is a combination of what has been going on historically (before one was even born) as a process that goes back hundreds or thousands of years, as well as being mixed up with key events and significant contributory factors on one's own life, such as education, religion, social class etc.

But what do the experts say? I turned to some of our great thinkers to pick out some interesting quotes:

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” 

Ray Bradbury

[here, I think the point is that culture is something that is living, within people, not any specific object]

"The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural."

Ruth Benedict 

[I understand this to be saying that society is necessary in order to have culture. Without community, there can be none]

"Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers."

Simone Weil

[I'm honestly not really sure what Simone is getting at here]

So, in conclusion, looking for a distinction of what 'culture' is, is a fool's errand. One will easily find a hundred answers and all of them right or wrong, depending on your viewpoint. Is that they key? Should we be content to understand 'culture' as something potentially all-encompassing and ultimately devoid of meaning, lifted only on a shallow breeze of subjectivity? 

2. What is meant by the concept "cultural differences"?

Given the above meander on the meaning of the word 'culture', we're immediately back into the frying pan with this question.

To my mind, cultural differences come about when it is apparent that people are playing by different rules. We learn the rules of the world as we grow up. We come to interpret the world around us in certain ways, through a prism founded on the society we are raised in. Often, societies differ in the way they present reality and how to deal with it, which results in cultural differences.

What's interesting for me is how people deal with cultural differences. We are basically given two options each time we encounter conflict in our lives, no matter what the nature of the conflict is: Do I adjust myself to fit with the world (which can be represented in any form, from another person, to society at large) or do I set about adjusting the world to fit me?

I like to think that I embrace cultural differences. For me, it's all part of the rich tapestry of life that there exists different ways of seeing the world and interacting with it. If everybody was the same, that would be rather boring.

Here's a joke about cultural differences:

Two immigrants arrive in the United States and are discussing the difference between the Old Country and the U.S. One of them says that he's heard that people in the U.S. eat dogs, and if they're going to fit in, they better eat dogs as well. So they head to the nearest hot dog stand and order two 'dogs.' The first guy unwraps his, looks at it, and nervously looks at his friend.
"What part did you get?"

Sources:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/culture

http://www.quoteland.com/topic/Culture-Quotes/513/

http://www.jokes.com/funny-nationality-jokes/7fh9xn/culture-shock