What is Culture?

©2022 by Vernon Miles Kerr and VernonMilesKerr.com

#FirstCuppaJoe for Apr 13 (thread)

What is #culture?  What does it mean when people say, “I have to honor my culture?”  What are they “honoring”?  

Culture can be so many things to so many people. It can be simply a set of mutually-shared preferences, histories, and philosophical assumptions.  Culture can be a unit of measurement, as in “Lady Vivian is such an elegant, cultured person,” or “John Doe is such a scurvy, un-cultured dolt!” 

 Culture can also be a dab of putrid, corrupt and dangerous pathogen in a petri dish.

 To which do we refer, when we say, “I have to honor my culture”?  Whatever it is, the over-emphasis on one’s “culture,” seems to involve pieces of all those definitions, including the petri dish.