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Friday, January 25, 2013

The Present, Past, and Future Culture

Culture is the similarity that people share, but it is something deeper than just the clothes they wear, the language they speak, and the technology they utilize. A professional businessman living in downtown New York City, with the most cutting-edge  technology and the latest Audi vehicle, is comparable to a mechanic living in a poverty-stricken town in Mexico who is struggling to put food on the table for his family. Both of these men wish to be happy, one of them could associate that happiness with having an abundance of money, the other with spending time with his family and nurturing those relationships, but the idea of finding happiness still exists in both their lives.
The point here is that culture is universal. It is the aspirations that people share. Everyone wants to be happy, they want to be successful, and they want to be loved. The words of Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy, could not explain this idea any better when he writes how culture is, "...all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery...". He describes culture as being, to a certain extent, the inherent desires that humankind shares. 
       Some may say that culture is always evolving but when looked at in this respect, it is not. It is everlasting and has never changed.