Quotes About Culture

Despite its philosophical shortcomings, ethical relativism does have appeal, particularly to the popular culture. The first appeal of relativism is based on the important idea that morality does not develop in a sociological vacuum.

First, in terms of the observations of the cultural anthropologists who developed relativism, the degree of moral diversity is overstated and the high degree of moral consensus is understated.

Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn has noted the following: Every culture has a concept of murder, distinguishing this from execution, killing in war and other justifiable homicides. The notions of incest and other regulations upon sexual behavior, the prohibitions on untruth under defined circumstances, of restitution and reciprocity, of mutual obligations between parents and children—these and many other moral concepts are altogether universal.17

A third weakness of relativism is that cultural relativism as a normative system cannot be drawn from the observations of the cultural relativist.

Just because different cultures have different moral standards, even if the degree of moral diversity is not overstated, it does not follow that there is no such thing as absolute values that transcend culture.

The fifth and most serious charge against relativism is an extension of the fourth weakness. The relativist cannot morally evaluate any clearly oppressive culture or, more specifically, any obvious tyrant.

Much of what bad managers do is assume their job is simply to find new things to jam and new places to jam them into, without ever believing they need to understand how the system—the system of people known as culture—works.

With no universal measure for meaning to compare with the seemingly solid accounting for income, we fall into the data trap. Our larger culture, and our pesky parents, push us toward decisions that seem to score well but are blind to the most important elements of healthy careers and meaningful lives.

in the scramble to survive, founders often hire to solve immediate needs and simultaneously create long-term problems. This mistake is common enough that Bob Sutton wrote a book, The No-Asshole Rule, to help executives recognize the damage these hires cause to culture.5 No matter how many golden lectures a leader gives imploring people to "Be collaborative" or "Work as a team," if the people hired have destructive habits, the lecture will lose.

Although he was not using these as a hammer to end arguments, he regularly referred to data as part of his thinking. He wanted a data-influenced culture, not a data-driven one.

Our larger culture, and our pesky parents, push us toward decisions that seem to score well but are blind to the most important elements of healthy careers and meaningful lives.

For all of the strengths of WordPress's bazaar culture, its user experience lacked the grace and clarity a cathedral architect would naturally provide.

No matter how many golden lectures a leader gives imploring people to "Be collaborative" or "Work as a team," if the people hired have destructive habits, the lecture will lose.

Technology does have an impact on behavior, but culture comes first.

Laughter leads to running jokes, and running jokes lead to a shared history, and a shared history is culture.

Remember that culture changes the value of tools: for example, if you have a team of people who hate each other, they will make each other miserable no matter how many billions of dollars of communication technology they use. Alternatively if you have people who trust each other and have similar goals, they'll be effective with smoke signals and carrier pigeons. Wars have been won by tightly knit armies using candles and Morse code.

When a culture shifts too far into faith in data, people with great intuitions leave. They'll find employment where their judgment is valued rather than remain as an annoyance in some powerful equation maker's report.

The most dangerous tradition we hold about work is that it must be serious and meaningless.

The staff at WordPress.com call support "Happiness." Therefore it's not the support team, but the Happiness team. And people who work in support aren't called tech support staff; they're called Happiness Engineers (HE).

remote work, and many other perks [..], will work or fail because of the company culture, not because of the perk itself.

so there we are, golden drones droning in unison. this is the West man, the pinnacle of civilization. this is where it started man. Come visit my culture. come culture my vision. we all own Automobiles here too. 87 greyhounds died in a fire today. someone lost some bucks.

The street outside my window is one of a million likeminded Los Angeles streets. Taggers, homeless, families and lovers, thieves and beggars, running children and old women, churches, bars, corner stores, Spanish, Cambodian and Armenian words and accents. I want to hug my street and all within, to feel the throbbing pulse beating its steady rhythm.

I assure you that in all matters of discretion not involving food, we make etiquette tutors look like slobbering barbarians.

The word "BAE" which is popular in North American society is actually the Danish word for poop.