On Culture

I’ve often been confused by what culture means. Is it the manner in which a group of people dress, eat and drink? Or the common patterns with which they think? Are there geographic boundaries to culture? The amount of people needed to create a culture has also seemed uncertain. A clique sometimes looks suspiciously similar to a new culture.

I believe the internet has largely changed the way culture grows, whatever it means. It is particularly less bounded by geographic location. Of course, it didn’t need to be location limited before the age of the internet either, but people certainly had less opportunities to communicate with others outside their local region in the past. Nevertheless, it still has a location element to it. We’re easily influenced by the people in our surroundings even if we don’t notice it, this could be as simple as the way we use our hand movements when communicating with others. This word, “culture”, seems time dependent to a certain degree as well. I have a lot more in common with the average person in Australia than I have with someone from my home town a thousand years ago.

Furthermore, it would be wrong to attribute myself to a single culture. Growing up in Turkey has, for instance, helped shape my sense of humour, eating habits, and cleaning habits in ways that are unique to the region, but even simply going through Reddit comments in high school strongly changed the way I think as well. I would claim that most people are a combination of a few different cultures, even if they’re proud to belong to a culture they particularly like out of these options. A person who has stayed in the same company for 25 years with the same people likely develops a whole mini culture of their own. I also notice that people share a lot of similarities in the tech industry, which shows that the economic role plays a big part here too. Besides this, my gender and race are an influential factor in how other people perceive me at first sight, which often changes the way they interact with me.

So a culture seems to be a big chunk of common points shared by a group of people, created in a combination of time, location, economic conditions, social identity and interests. It is vague, and difficult to analyse when you are part of the group of people you are trying to analyse as well. Like a fish trying to look at its own pond. Though the more I live, the more I realise there’s really not much difference between us.