Culture

Culture is a forgotten dimension in our educational paradigm. Even as definition. It is another fact that nothing can be understood by learning definition as all definitions, to be understood, needs to be lived, experienced and understood. So how does one understand culture and what really is culture?

Culture, or the totality of the context of our lives forms us and we also simultaneously participate in forming the culture. Every generation needs to relive, recreate and re invent certain aspects of its cultural sensibilities by engaging with the reality around them. Unless we have the possibilities for organic learning the cultural diversity will be a thing of the past.  Instead we will have homogenized, de sensitized, standardized  and mechanical existence.

Culture is the cognitive condition that is provided for the formation of the human being. 

Culture has a direct link with aesthetic sense, creativity and the respective ecology in which people live and connect.  In fact, beauty is the link that connects people to their environment. Cultural diversity has been the result of diverse aesthetic sensibilities developed in people as a result of living in diverse ecological conditions. This act of authentic living is itself an act of knowledge creation. The outer manifestations of any culture- architecture, craft, food, music, dance and ritual are imbued with the aesthetic sense of the people who belong to that culture.

CULTURE FORMS US AND WE FORM CULTURE

Every generation needs to relive, recreate and re invent certain aspects of  its  cultural sensibilities by engaging with the reality around them. Unless we have the possibilities for organic learning the cultural diversity will be a thing of the past.  Instead we will have homogenized, de sensitized, standardized  and mechanical existence.

Culturally rooted?

Culture is the result of how aesthetic sensibilities of people get manifested in the things they make and how they live, and aesthetic sensibilities were awakened naturally by engaging with their contexts.

•   In harmony with oneself-

•   balanced biological and psychological needs

•   creativity, sense of belonging

Culturally uprooted

•   De-contextualized aesthetic sense.

•  Culture is learned like general knowledge to be applied at will. 

•  Like sustainability

•  Alienation, homogenization,  Inferiority complex, mechanical

Revisiting the fundamentals

To begin with it is important to revisit some basic issues that are being taken for granted. What is the purpose of beauty in human life? What is the purpose of knowledge in life? It is important to go deeper in to some of these basic issues like what is creativity & culture and how it is formed, also what is Cognition and aesthetic sense.

What is culture then? How does culture get transmitted? How is cultural diversity preserved?