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!
September 1, 2008 at 5:23 pm |
I agree with you. Tradition is one of the primary causes that has mostly prevented humanity from evolving and thinking freely. But I think your definition of culture in this article is mostly interchangable with tradition and norm. And from this point of view, I completely agree. But if you define culture as a guideline of thinking, like for example the passion of employees in big IT companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft, it’s not necessarily a negative or bad thing in my opinion. This is the reason they don’t give up. The passion, synnergy and motivation of those companies are caused by something in those communities which you can call culture or anything but whatever you call it, it’s a good thing.
September 3, 2008 at 10:47 am |
Let me first start with a definition of culture, culture is a set of knowledge, skills, customs, manners, norms, believes, myths, arts, and other intellectual expressions of a particular society. Some cultures are global like inhibition of marriage with incest, but usually it differs from society to society. We should distinguish culture from religion and law although they are entangled here in Iran.
The fact is that culture is produced by the society it’s not inside you, they teach you and it’s a way for you to accommodate yourself with society whereas it accommodates society with environment. So if you were a skirt in public you should expect people to call you abnormal because norm is defined by them, and you can’t blame them for calling you that.
But for me culture and tradition are not a matter of positive or negative as mehrdad said, it’s a matter of banding, and I hate to be banned and I don’t need to be controlled!
At last you said “tradition and legislative rules, hobbles us. Nonetheless, it is natural and unavoidable!” I do agree on being unavoidable but I don’t think it’s natural! Just because a bunch of people accept to do it doesn’t mean that it’s natural or it’s always there!
September 3, 2008 at 2:05 pm |
Mehrdad, that’s a kind of passion. That’s a tool for them to show off their strength and unity! That is not culture! It doesn’t deal with their whole life time! This is only about their business, not entire their lives! Sure, it’s good! However, if it doesn’t ban them from being free!
Leila, I am blaming them because they define such norms that ban me. As you said, these norms are part of culture.
> But for me culture and tradition are not a matter of positive or negative as mehrdad said, it’s a matter of banding
Being banned is negative, isn’t it?
September 4, 2008 at 6:58 am |
I really can not say being banned is negative or positive, it depends. For example the norm that bans you from thieving is thought to be a positive ban. But in fact I think there should be no banding at all in the other way there should be no law, but my thoughts are not considered to be practical!
September 4, 2008 at 4:12 pm |
Leila,
Do you know what is worst with culture? The fact that all of these bandings are imposed from the top to the bottom! You can’t bring any reason or excuse! We are imprisoned in the culture!
September 5, 2008 at 9:28 am |
Yes, that’s kind of passion, but the primary reason of that passion is not employees themselves. It’s somehow inherited from most top-level employees. It’s the community they work in that has caused that passion. So what do you call that?
September 6, 2008 at 8:03 pm |
It’s true that we are imprisoned in culture but there is a point that can’t be neglected, we are producing culture ourselves as long as we are part of the society!!
September 7, 2008 at 4:25 am |
True! But what if I am in minority?
September 8, 2008 at 2:50 am |
It’s a direct descendant of freedom. People are free to do whatever they want unless they’re harming other people. But the borders of this freedom is not very clear, because there are contradictions in what people want. When this happens, what majority of people want (whether it’s right or wrong) becomes the right way to act. If you are a minority in any community, you should NOT try to act the way you want because you are probably taking away their freedom. You have 2 choices: to change their mind, and therefore by becoming the majority, you can do whatever you want. If you’re not able to convince them or you’re not interested, you’re asked to leave the community. What and how the majority of people think and act becomes the de facto standard of the community they’re participating in, even if it’s the wrong way.
September 9, 2008 at 4:36 pm |
I think I’ve talked about my opinion before. but I point to libralism which I guess you believe! It means: you are free in your life except the time you distract others from their personal freedom.this is the basic of libralism in any society. but culture in sense is’nt just restricted to your examples of normality and abnormality in iran. culture in evolutionary trend is something more to explain and complain about some of the nonses rules which may bother anyone! and I think I’ve talked about the evolution reasons for some of these rules,but some of them are importatnt for living in society, because the absence of some of them may cause damage to freedom and smooth life of a society! and crime is somthing that never will be given up!
October 3, 2008 at 1:40 am |
Agha ye sharabe ghermez faghat be salamati shoma zadim!
I’m afraid our life’s not enough to make sth outta that country…
October 4, 2008 at 8:30 pm |
are you ever going to post a new entry or what? ( aTsh dari?)
October 5, 2008 at 4:57 am |
Sure! I wasn’t planning to disappoint my visitors! Actually, I do have three new entries ready to be published! However, since I have used some exact quotations from certain people, I am waiting for their permission to publish them. Please be patient and keep on checking
It will also be a great idea to add my RSS to your iGoogle 
October 5, 2008 at 5:53 pm |
x-( I cant submit my comment for “continuous explenation…”
October 5, 2008 at 5:55 pm |
I guess I’ll just post it here
Bohm mentions that “one of our problems is
that we have a certain way of thinking i.e.
fragmentation. This is to break thing up into
bits, as if they were independent. it’s not
merely making divisions but it is breaking
things up which are not independent. its like
taking a watch and smashing it into
fragments, rather than taking it apart and
finding its parts. the parts are parts of a
whole, but the fragments are just arbitrarily
broken off from each other. things which
really fit and belong together are treated as
if they dont. thats one of the features of
thought thats going wrong.”
long one huh?
peace
October 5, 2008 at 5:58 pm |
you might also wanna check Afshin Shafiee’s web log, there are 4 entries named پاره و یکپارچه
dialogos.blogfa.com/post-133.aspx
dialogos.blogfa.com/post-134.aspx
dialogos.blogfa.com/post-135.aspx
dialogos.blogfa.com/post-145.aspx
October 6, 2008 at 8:45 am |
Afsoon,
Thanks for your references. However, what I meant by discreteness is somehow different from your fragmentation. The concept I’m talking about deals with the matter of unification and the nature of observation. I agree that the first posts of this weblog were too unclear. I’ll discuss this fact with you personally…