Some of our routines are absolutely incomprehensible for me and each time I look deep inside of them I get more confused! You have seen many of them in everyday life! They are more visible in traditional and developing societies. They are mainly been imposed in two ways: Legislative rules and culture. Examples of the first type are easier to recognize. It may be funny for you to know that drinking alcohol, regardless of the volume and other conditions, will take you into custody in Iran! Let’s analyze it: this is my throat. Here is my own room with my own friends who are happy to be with me. This is a glass of wine… I drink the liquid that is in this glass and just this one… WHAT? YOU GONNA ARREST ME?
However, this is not the issue. I am inviting you to think of the matter of culture in this way. Culture is a set of social rules that everybody within the society is obliged to accept! It is all the values shared by the society and if you neglect them, they will call you abnormal! In Iran, as an example, you are abnormal if you are a man and wearing a skirt! You are abnormal if you call a person, older than you, using a singular pronoun! (Note that we have both plural and singular pronouns for second person in Persian. However it is polite to use a plural pronoun, even if he or she is single). You are abnormal if you laugh too much… These examples were at the lowest levels of social behaviors. Sometimes culture prevents you from reaching your greatest wills! Once a friend (Azadeh), who is a fan of culture, brought me an example to show culture is a necessary thing for any society. She told me that eliminating culture and letting people do what they want to do is like wishing a place in which people can both play football and study Quantum Computing in a same time! My answer is no! In fact, if I want to model culture as a rule of football and Quantum Computing, I will say for example, having a culture in a society is like a city in which everybody always are playing football and there is no room to study Quantum Computing! Maybe I am male but wish to wear a skirt! Where should I go?!
Nevertheless, you may ask if culture is nonsense, then why it has came into existence and why it remained powerful? The answer is convergence! Two fire-flies, which are asynchrony flashing, will flash synchrony if you put them together! A group of people who are walking around a circle will synchronize their footsteps, if you play a rhythmic drum-like sound for them. People do the same in a greater manner in their societies and call it culture!
While on one hand I demand that culture is bullshit. On the other hand, I also believe that it can’t be removed from any society! There are three reasons. Firstly, as I have discussed above, the rule of convergence will not let us do so! Second, culture is flag of a nation and unfortunately since we are not totally globalized, your nation and nationalism are tools of power! You will lose your obvious rights if you do not belong to anywhere! Third, ordinary people, not the elites, need a set of rules to control them!
So in one sentence I conclude that culture, like tradition and legislative rules, hobbles us. Nonetheless, it is natural and unavoidable!
