📘 Part 3: Different cultures

This episode's vocabulary

Divide (noun) - a difference or separation.

To bind (verb) - to unite people or to make them feel that they share something.

Cultural capital (noun) - the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, etc.) that promote social mobility in a society.

Heritage (noun) - features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages, or buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance.

To bridge (verb) - to make the difference or division between two things smaller or less severe.

Societal (adj.) - relating to or involving society.

Strife (noun) - violent or angry disagreement.

Indigenous (adj.) - used to refer to, or relating to, the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else.

Prior to something - before a particular time or event.

Invasive (adj.) - moving into all areas of something and difficult to stop.

Tolerant (adj.) - willing to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them.

To impede (verb) - to make it more difficult for something to happen or more difficult for someone to do something.

Prevalence (noun) - the fact that something is very common or happens often.

To assimilate (verb) - to become part of a group, country, society, etc., or to make someone or something become part of a group, country, society, etc.

In a nutshell (idiom) - very briefly, giving only the main points.

Guideline (noun) - information intended to advise people on how something should be done or what something should be.

To unfold (verb) - if a situation or story unfolds, it develops or becomes clear to other people.

Elite (noun) - the richest, most powerful, best-educated, or best-trained group in a society.

Mainstream (noun) - (of beliefs or behaviour) common and shared by most people, or representing such beliefs or behaviour.

To subvert (verb) - to try to destroy or damage something, especially an established political system.

Advent (noun) - the fact of an event happening, an invention being made, or a person arriving.

Baseline (noun) - an imaginary line used as a starting point for making comparisons.

Uniformity (noun) - the quality or fact of being the same, or of not changing or being different in any way.

Metaphysical (adj.) - relating to the part of philosophy that is about understanding existence and knowledge.

Code (noun) - a set of principles that are accepted and used by society or a particular group of people.

Questions and Answers

M: How can people get to know people from different cultures better?

R: Well, talking to them, or at least listening to what they have to say would be a good place to start. I think most people would be pleasantly surprised by how much they have in common with each other despite the cultural divides.

M: What are the advantages and disadvantages of cultural diversity?

R: It depends on the extent of the divide, and how many values are shared to bind them together. But assuming people have more in common than not, then the advantages would be increased access to cultural capital and heritage, which makes idea generation and problem-solving easier. By contrast, if the gap is too wide to bridge, it could lead to societal strife and collapse if not appropriately addressed.

M: How can traditional culture and other cultures coexist?

R: Well, I'm not sure what you mean by that, to be honest. If you mean the indigenous culture that existed prior to the arrival of others, then that will depend on how invasive and tolerant they are of each other. I mean, if you mean like traditional and more modern cultures, then the same concept applies, actually. I mean, in the British Empire, the imperial rule usually existed largely above and separate from the local cultures. And, well, that was provided that they served or at least didn't impede the Empire's goals.

M: How are past cultures different to those people live in now?

R: They're a lot more open to record and scrutiny with the increased prevalence of technology. You can see what people do and so you can study them and assimilate into their cultures more readily. By contrast, it's difficult to say how ancient Greeks and Romans were with the same accuracy.

M: Where does culture come from?

R: Well, in a nutshell, it comes from not wanting to live in chaos. Without culture, we have no way to decide what's important or even what to do or what counts as moving in any direction. So groups of people get together, decide on what the guidelines are, and follow them as the world unfolds. I imagine the local context also plays a role but people live in a culture and make it.

M: Who shapes culture and how?

R: Ultimately everyone does and all the actions they take, since we're all living in some kind of culture, whether we want to or not, I suppose the influence of elites has greater force in terms of deciding what the mainstream culture does, since they have access to the greatest amounts of power and resources. But there are cultures of resistance which work on local levels to subvert this too.

M: How do you think culture will be different in the future?

R: With the advent of digital technology and internet, I think culture will become more global and more integrated with technology. For example, we will see culture being confined less and less to specific races and geographical areas and more broadly combined across the planet. You can already see that in places like Japan and America. However, because the baseline culture was different to begin with, I doubt we'll see greater uniformity, we'll probably see similar levels of diversity or even more of it.

M: What are the key features of culture?

R: I think it depends if we mean physical or metaphysical things. So the things which we see could be codes of dress, or language, or religion, or rituals and games. And the things we feel and experience are things like codes of manners and norms of behaviour such as law and morality, even systems of belief, and art too, even though you know, you can see it, how it's considered plays a part. It's all ultimately some way of organizing the chaos though.