What is Culture?

Is it earned or learned?

The idea of culture has been permeating my mind for a while. What is it? Is it the breath of populi of activity in the streets at an organic street farmers market? Is it a select stylized handshake on Lake and Hiawatha? Is it two merchants arguing over spice prices with animated hands? No and yes.

Culture according to Webster is: “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time”.  Now I’m not talking about culture in the sense of a posh, snobby art showing of post modernism where two ants are being eaten by a toad in a pond made of mayonnaise. What I’m trying to understand is culture in the sense of human interaction and understanding of themselves and others in their social environment.  Why do I notice in the Mid-west that no one takes the last slice of that very fine Chicago pizza? Is the act of not appearing selfish in the context of pizza etiquette universal, or is the social mores more geographical than we want to admit?

I was walking in street not here in the U.S and a homeless woman was begging for spare change. This particular country was not lacking in economic prosperity, in fact is in top ten of wealthy countries.  As the woman reached for alms her a woman wearing black and a black leather purse swore at the woman and hit her. No one reacted and no one stopped the woman from hitting the homeless woman.  I was ashamed at myself for doing nothing and in shock of the lady’s bourgeois’ action to her fellow woman. After that horrible incident I noticed a particular submissive and deferential demeanor of the down trodden in that country. Laying and knelling, the homeless were almost, no, they were if full prostration to their economic betters. No solicitation, no pandering, just…begging. They were silent and absent of eye contact. Anyone that tried to make eye contact in attempt to curry empathy or sympathy was expeditiously “put in check”.  Then I visited the Golden State: California; beaches, blonde soaked up botoxed cougars with fast pink cars and hipsters as organically grown as sewage in Paris’s Catacombs: The Golden state! I noticed a considerable difference in the demeanor and attitude in the down trodden in both countries.  The down trodden were excessively polite in the first country I visited. I clearly remember a homeless person knelling on cardboard bowing with an open hat to accept offerings. That scene repeated itself many a time as I traveled that country. Now, in Cali, complete there was a difference in expectation of the homeless. In fact, they were downright rude.  “Can you help a sister out?” with a catwoman’s hand on hip pose with her second hand thrusted in pageantry and panache; almost with a kick her step. Why is a person begging for money have a kick in their step? Why is she happy? She bumped into to me and explained her displeasure in slurs from alcohol as well as profanity.  The homeless in California were self-entitled, rude, and often pushy. If you declined to be a Samaritan they cursed and I saw one person who declined get spit at.

Now, to be fair the first location where I observed homeless behavior it was winter and in California it was summer. Was it because of climate that people’s courtesy was in short supply in Southern California? No, of course not. It was culture. Now, I don’t want a culture where I can practice my pimp hand on the lower classes if I feel slighted, but I did see a considerable difference in courtesy and politeness, not just the homeless but the entire people.

In the book Guns, Germs, and steel author Jared Diamond opines that human history is geo-destiny. He says in his book that civilizations are/were on certain trajectories based on geography and resources; a form of scientific pre-destination or geo-destination.  Could the same be said about cultures? That culture is influenced more by geography than the people that live in them. I reject this conclusion in favor in hoping that human behavior is more improvable and formable by those around us. I believe that culture is not set in stone but rather clay. We can add more water, clay or mortar to change and improve our culture. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to just shrug our shoulders and say “Oh, well”.  We can influence those around us not to be jerks or make our kids study harder with baseball bats signed by convicted convicts. Culture is not a static unmovable abstract that is unchanging. Culture is us! Fifty years ago it was ago there were signs that said “colored” and “whites only” but it took blood, water hoses, German shepherds, tears, movies, radio, art, schools, and common human decency to makes those signs obsolete.

We are not stone but clay with blood and water. Add your clay or water to make a difference. Cheesecake.