📘 Part 3: Culture and its influence

This episode's vocabulary

Top-down (adj.) - used to refer to a situation in which decisions are made by a few people in authority rather than by the people who are affected by the decisions.

Bottom-up (adj.) - starting at the lowest levels or from the smallest details of an organization, system, plan, etc.

To feed back (phrasal verb) - to have an effect on something.

Subversive (adj.) - trying to destroy or damage something, especially an established political system.

To crave (verb) - to have a very strong feeling of wanting something.

Taboo (noun) - a subject, word, or action that is avoided for religious or social reasons.

Immaterial (adj.) - not important, or not relating to the subject you are thinking about.

Primordial (adj.) - existing at or since the beginning of the world or the universe.

Сounter-culture (noun) - a way of life and a set of ideas that are completely different from those accepted by most of society, or the group of people who live this way.

Rebellion (noun) - violent action organized by a group of people who are trying to change the political system in their country.

Norm (noun) - an accepted standard or a way of behaving or doing things that most people agree with.

Launchpad (noun) - something that provides you with the opportunity to follow a particular plan of action.

Outright (adj.) - completely or immediately.

Centrifugal (adj.) - (of a turning object) moving towards the point around which it is turning.

Centripetal (adj.) - (of a turning object) moving towards the point around which it is turning.

To bind (verb) - to tie something or someone tightly or to fasten something.

To devolve (verb) - to (cause power or responsibility to) be given to other people.

Questions and Answers

M: How is culture formed?

R: Oh, god, that's the big question. I suppose it's a top-down and bottom-up thing, really. I mean, the people that make up the culture contribute ideas to make sense of the world, and the biggest, most successful ones feed back down to help them make decisions. I make it sound so simple, but it's probably actually a very messy process.

M: What kind of culture is popular among young people?

R: Well, usually it's portrayed as new or subversive since young people crave novelty and like to challenge boundaries. You can see it with things like phones which come out on an annual basis, or some TV shows which are produced as if they break some kind of boundary or taboo. Whether or not that's true is immaterial, but it's at least part of the reason why these decisions are made.

M: How do young people learn about different cultures?

R: Probably, just by being alive in the world. It's hard to go anywhere these days without bumping into or coming across something or someone that's different to you in some way, shape or form. Aside from that, they're probably told things about other people and places and ways of living at the school. And I'm assuming they must be told by other adults as they go through life, it would be difficult to imagine otherwise.

M: Which is more important in terms of culture, literature or music?

R: Well, by and large is probably music. I mean, you can see or hear that demonstrated in the number of famous singers and bands compared to the number of well-known authors. As someone like Kylie Minogue, who has an almost global audience, whereas most authors are isolated to their genre communities. Moreover, music, it kind of has this almost primordial quality to it. People have been making noise for millions of years, whereas writing is a relatively new invention. So it makes sense that its impact has been more limited in scope.

M: Does the culture of the past have an impact on today's culture?

R: Well, it has to, when you think about it. The things don't just appear from nowhere. Even in the case of things like a counter-culture. It's usually rebellion against the established cultural norms. So you need to have that foundation as a sort of launchpad almost for anything new to happen.

M: How does the internet affect culture?

R: Probably, in, well, as many ways as there are people. Although it's not clear how you would measure that. In 2011 there was this wave of revolutions and protest movements that kicked off, partially as a result of coordination on the internet. And it also serves as a place to create and transmit memes of all descriptions all over the place. So the ways that it can influence culture, if not just outright created are easy to see or should be easy to see.

M: And what about the future? How do you think culture will change in the future?

R: I think that depends on where we're talking about. I mean, culture will change everywhere in the future, because everywhere is changing all the time. But how? I don't know. And if we think about how it could happen. When it comes to culture, there are centrifugal forces and centripetal forces. One of these acts to bind the culture together, and the other acts to do the opposite of that. And one is about order, and the other one is about control. So you'll probably find that one of these things dominates more than another. But where that will happen will vary based on what the culture is like at the time.

M: And do you think more people will be interested in their own culture? In the culture of their own country in the future?

R: It's hard to say with any accuracy because it will depend on the strength of the national spirit. Lots of people think we're moving in a direction of having lots of supernational entities where the power of the nation is sort of devolved to these bodies like the European Union or the Organization of American States. So if that happens, then... And it might be a sign that people are becoming less interested, and it seems to be moving in that direction in lots of places, but in other places, it's not. You have lots of breakaway countries with very strong national identities, so it depends again, on the context.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your cultured answers!

R: No worries!

Discussion

M: Rory, you do know a lot of things about culture.

R: Yes, it's almost like I studied this at university.

M: I know. Look at you. So it's because you read a lot? So you just read books? Or like where, where, where do you take all these ideas from, Rory?

R: Well, when we talk about national culture, I mean, I just studied politics at university, and then when we talk about the future of culture, well, that's something people are making and shaping all the time. So it's just observation, really.

M: Yeah, dear listener, just observation, you see? But you can get ideas about culture from articles. You can read articles in your native language. If you can read in English, it's better to read about culture in English. Yeah. And if you are not into culture, unfortunately, questions in IELTS are about culture, and also some essays might be about culture. So yeah, art, culture, music, architecture. Sorry... Do some reading.

R: I always think it's really funny when people complain that IELTS is difficult because of course, you mean to all of this background knowledge. And it's like, yes, in order to have the same level of language as an educated native speaker, you need to work very hard. I mean, I had to work hard too, even though I'm a native speaker. True. I imagine the same is also true of you, Maria.

M: Oh, yeah, like reading a lot, listening to different podcasts, reading lots of sample answers and sample essays. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and also it's about reading in your mother tongue. Like in Russian, I listen to audiobooks, I read the news. I read different, you know, blogs about technology. I sometimes go to different conferences, you know. And I listen to smart people who read a lot more than me. I steal their ideas. So, yeah, dear listener, this is it.

R: You don't steal. You become inspired by them.

M: So the first question is crazy. How is culture formed? Like what?

R: Well, quite.

M: Yeah, and Rory gave us some scientific answers. A top-down, bottom-up thing. I have... Like, dear listener, don't worry about it. Okay?

R: What's difficult about that? Bottom-up is just individual elements coming together, and top-down is the result of that, and how it feeds back into the process.

M: And why is it top-down? Why is it bottom? What is bottom? What is down?

R: The bottom-up part of cultural formation will be the individual people that make up a group, okay? And so you have this group, but they must have something in common, or some shared ideas about the world, or they must be expressing this. So what happens is, all of this comes out, and it's almost like a battle of survival or survival of the fittest ideas, and the strongest ideas win. And they dominate how the decision-making process happens for the people in the group. So for example, the formation of religion could be about people believing in a higher power, but then there's this big discussion about what the higher power is and how it acts in the world, and the ideas that become the strongest in this filter back down to control how people behave or how the religion operates in society.

M: Oh, my God... Dear listener, how are you doing? Are you okay?

R: Well, we could also use it to talk about food. Would you like to talk about food? Would that be easier?

M: Yes, please.

R: Okay, what's a, what's a really popular kind of food?

M: Pizza.

R: Okay, what kind of topping?

M: Topping? Okay, Margherita, cheese and tomato. Margarita.

R: Right, okay. So all of the people in... Let's say, let's say pizza's from Italy, for the sake of argument, all the people in Italy were like experimenting with different kinds of pizza, doing their own thing, because this is not centrally controlled. But what happens is one pizza recipe becomes more popular than all of the others, this margarita pizza, and it catches on, and more people start buying into this idea of margarita pizza. And until this is one of, like, the main things that people go to when they think about pizza. So the bottom-up process is all those people experimenting, and the top-down one is, this is a super successful idea, and it comes back down into the culture and people. It's a popular thing for them. Does that make it clearer?

M: Yeah, much clearer. Thank you, Rory! Well, look at Rory, wow!

R: I should say, these are really simple examples. Obviously, how culture is formed is not just the people in the group. It's also outside the group. And it's not just people creating things. There's also violence involved, things like this. So it is messy still.

M: Yeah. And if the examiner asks you, what is culture, you just say, how long is a piece of string?

R: What? No. Culture is really easy to explain. Culture is the thing that people use in order to understand how the world works.

M: Okay. Yeah, and, dear listener, if you don't know the answer to the question or the question is very abstract, very broad, very difficult, and it's very difficult to give the answer. You just respond how long is a piece of string? This means that I have no idea. Nobody knows. It's very difficult.

R: I know.

M: Young people and their culture. Young people crave novelty. Novelty? New things crave, they want new things in their lives. Like give me new things. So you can say young people crave novelty. They challenge boundaries. Boundaries? Limits. So they don't like limits. They are free and they enjoy crazy cultures.

R: Well, I mean, it's just something that young people do. They want to understand where the boundaries are, and so the best way of finding that out is to test where they are. This is why young people have such unusual behaviour compared to fully grown adults.

M: And then you can say that you can see it in how they use their phones. So in new models of phones which come out. models or phones come out, they appear. And also TV shows which are produced for young people. And also, when we talk about kinds of culture, you can say pop culture or different subcultures. It's kind of like youth culture, different subcultures.

R: What's a subculture? Can I get an example?

M: For example, goths, skaters.

R: Subcultures are so cool.

M: Yeah, dear listener, so you can just Google what subcultures are popular in your country.

R: But there's lots to choose from. There are ones based around music or fashion, sometimes a combination of the two. And then there are subcultures that revolve around individuals, like the people who follow Taylor Swift, are called Swifties. That's a subculture, that's pretty cool.

M: Also, dear listener, like gamers. So people who are into video games, so they have their subcultures. Like gamers or players.

R: Maria has discovered other cultures. This is amazing.

M: People learn about different cultures. How? From books, from just being alive, okay? From being alive in the world. And as we live our life, we bump into different things, and people. So bump into? To see something unexpectedly. Or you come across something new, some painting or graffiti or some clothes, right? And this is how you discover different cultures. And also we are told things about other people and places. We have different types of culture, like literature, and music, they are all different like types. What other types do we have?

R: What? Artistic culture. And fashion may be its own culture, or it may be a subculture of art. It depends on who you talk to. There's also vernacular culture, which is quite fun and in contrast to that, there's a high culture as well.

M: What?

R: Vernacular culture or low culture is the culture of the common people of a country, whereas high culture is something connected to the elite.

M: Wow.

R: So in my country, things like the carry-on films, which is like a kind of comedy film released before the 90s and after the 1940s, is considered a feature of the vernacular culture because it's about common people and what they find funny. But an example of high culture might be the poems of certain... Well, just of poetry in general, to be honest. It's usually higher classes of people that made poems before the last century.

M: And, dear listener, culture could be material. Something like TV, radio, different products. And non-material culture. Beliefs, values, languages, music, literature. Yeah, language could be part of culture as well.

R: Oh, it definitely is. It's a part of subcultures as well. Lots of subcultures have their own ways of talking to each other. I love this topic.

M: So here, literature or music, Rory says it's probably music. And Rory has written several books, and he still thinks music is more important than literature. Interesting.

R: Well, if it's been around longer.

M: Okay. And we have a lot of singers and bands. Bands? Like music groups. Compared to the number of well known authors.

R: There must be more... There have to be more singers and bands. Music has been around for like millions of years longer than writing.

M: Okay. And then you can give an example. For example, Kylie Minogue, for example, Madonna, for example, I don't know, the Beatles has a global audience. So pretty much all over the world. Everybody knows who Madonna is, who the Beatles were.

R: Whether they want to know who Madonna is or not.

M: And music has an almost primordial quality. What is this primordial?

R: Oh, it's to do with, well, I'm using it to connect to not the beginning of time, but like, way, way back in time, the time when, like, human beings were emerging, when things were emerging and starting.

M: Yeah, primordial means existing at or since the beginning of the world.

R: Yeah. It could also be used to refer to, like, the first stages of something. So here I'm not talking about the world. I'm talking about music and human beings.

M: Yeah, so when people appeared, music was with them right away. Something like that. And people have been making noise for millions of years. Present perfect continuous. People have always been making music or making noises, which then became music. Writing is a relatively new invention, but dear listener, you may disagree with Rory.

R: You may be incorrect. Yes, this is true.

M: The past have an impact on today's culture. The past influences our today's culture.

R: And it does. It's inevitable or inescapable.

M: Yeah. And you said like counter-culture. A counter-culture is like subculture?

R: Well, it could be. A counter-culture is more about resistance to the existing culture. So what happens is, you have the dominant culture, and the counter-culture provides an alternative to that. So I'm trying to think of a good example.

M: Hippies, hippies.

R: Well, yes, exactly. Hippies. Hippies are an example of a counter-culture because, well, I imagine hippies have the view that the dominant culture promotes violence and competition and is not harmonious, whereas they would promote harmony and community over those other values, as they see it. Just because one culture sees things a certain way does not mean that we must accept that definition of the world.

M: So the past serves as a foundation, okay? Or lays the foundation for our today's culture. The Internet affects culture. And we can talk about cyberculture, we can call it digital culture.

R: Oh, wow.

M: Cyberculture, dear listener. The social conditions brought about by the widespread use of computer networks for communication. So our lives are influenced by cyberculture.

R: We're doing it right now.

M: Yeah, and it's a new culture form by the way. Oh, yeah, for sure.

M: So the internet did influence culture. Cyberculture emerged, appeared. People started creating different memes. And you know, like memes are considered to be art, perhaps. They are part of our culture already.

R: Well, that's one conception. Memes, yes. But memes are like an essential element of any culture or any kind of system or way of living that passed from one person to another just by... It could be by imitating it or by having it in your thoughts.

M: Here, Rory told us about 2011. There was that wave of revolutions. So back in 2011, there were protest movements against the internet.

R: Well, not against the internet. They were aided by the internet.

M: So the internet helped to organize certain revolutions and protest movements.

R: Yeah. Well, it was used this way. I don't know if the internet helped actively in that.

M: Yeah. You can say that today we have internet culture. Cyberculture or internet culture. So online communities, people meet online people create online paintings, right? So they are kind of... Photos are all online. They can actually create clothes for you online. And this is going to be your online image, your online clothes, like not physical clothes, but kind of your online image. It's crazy.

R: It's cool.

M: Yeah, we can say about, like, online games, blogs, chat rooms, all these like internet memes, microblogs, online videos, like social networks. Virtual worlds. Right? Virtual reality glasses. I can't go to this museum. I would just like have a virtual tour, or I want to rent this flat, I'm gonna see a 3D virtual tour. So you can talk about things like this. Cancel culture. Oh, there we go. Yeah, when you get cancelled.

R: Thank heavens, that's never going to happen to us.

M: No, no, no. We are super neutral. Cancel culture, dear listener. So yeah, this is something that you should talk about, about what kinds of culture is popular among young people. Cancel culture. A cultural phenomenon in which an individual thought to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is just cancelled. So if you say something wrong about other people or other countries, you can get cancelled. And like pretty much like nobody buys your products, everybody burns your books. Kind of... Yeah, they cancel you. And it could be pretty bad. Just... You see, dear listener? Crazy.

R: It is a crazy world. It's cool, though. But hopefully, you have been able to learn a lot about how culture is formed and the various words that help us understand it.

M: Yay! Thank you very much for listening! If you are not into culture, make sure you read about culture in your mother tongue. Okay, dear listener?

R: If you are not into culture, find me on Instagram, send me a question about culture, and I will help you with it.

M: Sweet!

R: Bye!

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