Quotes About Culture

But if both liberalism and communism are now discredited, maybe humans should abandon the very idea of a single global story? Why should Vietnamese villagers put their faith in the brainchild of a German from Trier and a Manchester industrialist? Maybe each country should adopt a different idiosyncratic path, defined by its own ancient traditions? Perhaps even Westerners should take a break from trying to run the world, and focus on their own affairs for a change?

There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no lawn, no justice outside the common imagination of human beings

Simultaneously, scientists have studied the mental states of people considered to be healthy and normative. However, most relevant researches have been conducted on people from Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies, who do not constitute a representative sample of humanity. The study of the human mind has so far assumed that Homo sapiens is Homer Simpson. A

Just imagine how difficult it would've been to create churches, states or laws, if we could only speak about things that really exist, like lions or rivers

Incluso si decidiéramos repudiar por completo el legado de un imperio brutal con la esperanza de reconstruir y salvaguardar las culturas «auténticas» que lo precedieron, con toda probabilidad lo que defenderíamos no sería otra cosa que la herencia de un imperio más antiguo y no menos brutal.

Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully when they believe in common myths

la religión ha sido la tercera gran unificadora de la humanidad, junto con el dinero y los imperios. Puesto

These forfeited food surpluses fuelled politics, wars, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples.

En una encuesta tras otra, los costarricenses informan de niveles mucho más elevados de satisfacción vital que los singapurenses.

Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought the golden age was in the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating.

La cultura puede transformarse en respuesta a cambios en su ambiente o mediante la interacción con culturas vecinas. Sin embargo, las culturas también experimentan transiciones debido a sus propias dinámicas internas.

If a lost time traveller popped up in a medieval village and asked a passerby, 'What year is this?' the villager would be as bewildered by the question as by the stranger's ridiculous clothing.

Even if the market offers a good price, certain things just aren't done. Parents mustn't sell their children into slavery; a devout Christian must not commit a mortal sin; a loyal knight must never betray his lord; and ancestral tribal lands shall never be sold to foreigners.

Political, ethnic, cultural, and economic divisions endure, but they do not undermine the fundamental unity. Indeed, some divisions are made possible only by an overarching common structure. In the economy, for example, the division of labor cannot succeed unless everyone shares a single market.

This was easiest, since Old Persian was not that different from modern Persian, which Rawlinson knew well. An understanding of the Old Persian section gave him the key he needed to unlock the secrets of the Elamite and Babylonian sections. The great door swung open, and out came a rush of ancient but lively voices – the bustle of Sumerian bazaars, the proclamations of Assyrian kings, the arguments of Babylonian bureaucrats.

replication of cultural information units called 'memes'.

Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution.

Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for running it simply by making copies of their DNA and passing these on to their progeny. A conscious effort has to be made to sustain laws, customs, procedures and manners, otherwise the social order would quickly collapse.

They can nevertheless play the game with complete strangers because they have all learned an identical set of ideas about basketball. These ideas are entirely imaginary, but if everyone shares them, we can all play the game. The same applies, on a larger scale, to kingdoms, churches, and trade networks,

because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.

This network of artificial instincts is called 'culture'.

Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural.

De la misma manera que la cultura medieval no consiguió casar la caballería con el cristianismo, el mundo moderno no logra casar la libertad con la igualdad.