CULTURE and civilisation

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The word culture comes from the Latin root
colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). In general, it refers to
human activity; different definitions of culture reflect different theories
for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists use
the term to refer to the universal human capacity to classify experiences,
and to encode and communicate them
symbolically. They regard this capacity as a defining
feature of the genus Homo

A Definition Of Civilisation
by Philip Atkinson

All Human
inventions are first thoughts before they become things. So the creations of
communities such as cities, governments, armies, as well as communal
achievements such as conquests and discoveries— everything that goes to make a
civilization — must spring from a community's thoughts. Hence:

Civilisation: — is the tangible expression
of a communal understanding.

Communal Understanding:— is that single understanding allowed by the set
of values common to each member of a community. For example it is this
influence that decided one community to persecute the scientist Galileo and
suppress his notions, while another community to honour the scientist Isaac
Newton and embrace his notions. It decides what the community thinks and does.

Communal
Understanding exists, as it is expressed, in the unique language of the citizens,
who mould it by their conversation.

Conversation is:— the daily expression and exchange of individual
opinions; a mechanism that refines
communal understanding by promoting popular, while suppressing unpopular,
notions. That is, all those ideas which match common feelings of right and
wrong, will be repeated and magnified into reasons to act, while those which
receive little or no support will inevitably be ignored; which makes
conversation the ideas filter, or the mind, of the community.

A Community: being that group of people sharing a common
understanding who reveal themselves by using the same language, manners,
tradition and law.

A Communal Mind: is similar in operation to an individual mind, except
that audible conversation replaces silent thoughts; but the mechanism of understanding is the same —
ideas, expressed in words, which are filtered by a code of values to determine
which should become reasons for action. If a man is an irrational vegetarian
crank whose conversation is mainly tirades against imaginary persecutors, then
it is this process that will decide the man's future— whether as a despised
social outcast, or as an absolute monarch, like Hitler. This does not
mean that everyone believes what is popular, but unpopular concepts are ignored.
Consequently:—

1	By sharing the same process of thought as individuals, communal minds are subject to the same shortcomings of understanding as individuals: Understanding appears only after the formation of a basic set of values (morality), which become an essential and immutable part of the creature. Personality As the understanding of an individual confers a personality, so does the understanding of a community, and this the culture of the community. Honesty depends upon their nature; if unselfish, they will revere truth, otherwise truth will be discarded in favour of convenience. (See the two modes of communities.) Sanity may be lost, a graphic example being the Nazi phenomenon, when a whole nation behaved like a lunatic. Age may induce senility.
2	As words are the currency of thought, the use of language is critical to both private and public understanding, with the particular choice of words revealing the nature of an author's understanding. So the nature of the literature published by a community must reflect the nature of that community's understanding. Hence the history of a community's literature must be the history of that community's understanding.
3	As the nature and concerns of communal conversation are echoed by the media, the media can be considered the mirror of the mind of our society, with the character displayed by the media being the character of our civilisation.
4	All intelligence has a memory, and communal memory is made up of the traditions, manners, and ceremonies which retain the wisdom taught by experience through succeeding generations.

An
understanding can only assert itself over other understandings by violence, or its threat;
this is why the history of humanity is the violent resolution of opposing
understandings —war. Hence:

1.	The Strength Of An Understanding is that understanding's ability and determination to use violence.
2.	The Wealth And Achievements obtained by communal understanding are dependent upon the successful use of violence, or its threat. 'Pax Romana' only existed as long as the Ancient Romans were willing and able to inflict superior violence upon their enemies.
3.	A Community That Recoils From Violence is a community whose understanding has become senile, and is thus doomed.

A simple example of the creation and development of a Communal
Understanding (a community) can be found in the book "The Great Trek" by Oliver
Ransford. This history of the Boers describes how these people came together
and formed a communal understanding, expressed in its own unique language
—Afrikaner. It also reveals the essential role of violence necessary for the
Boers to assert themselves among other communities. Indeed Boer tradition
celebrates victories like Vegkop and Blood River as of crucial and
lasting significance.

civilisation
A	noun
	1	refinement, civilization, civilisation
			the quality of excellence in thought and manners and taste; "a man of intellectual refinement"; "he is remembered for his generosity and civilization"
		Category Tree: abstraction ╚attribute ╚quality ╚excellence ╚refinement, civilization, civilisation
	2	civilization, civilisation
			a society in an advanced state of social development (e.g., with complex legal and political and religious organizations); "the people slowly progressed from barbarism to civilization"
		Category Tree: group; grouping ╚social_group ╚society ╚civilization, civilisation
	3	culture, civilization, civilisation
			a particular society at a particular time and place; "early Mayan civilization"
		Category Tree: group; grouping ╚social_group ╚society ╚culture, civilization, civilisation ╚Western_culture; Western_civilization ╚Paleo-American_culture; Paleo-Amerind_culture; Paleo-Indian_culture ╚Mycenaean_civilization; Mycenaean_civilisation; Mycenaean_culture ╚Minoan_civilization; Minoan_civilisation; Minoan_culture ╚Helladic_civilization; Helladic_civilisation; Helladic_culture ╚Aegean_civilization; Aegean_civilisation; Aegean_culture
	4	civilization, civilisation
			the social process whereby societies achieve civilization
		Category Tree: phenomenon ╚process ╚human_process ╚social_process ╚civilization, civilisation

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Culture: The system of shared beliefs, values, customs,
behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their
world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to
generation through learning (p7).

This is a complex definition and points to four important
characteristics stressed by cultural relativists

A
Baseline Definition of Culture

People learn culture. That, we suggest, is culture's essential feature. Many
qualities of human life are transmitted genetically -- an infant's desire for
food, for example, is triggered by physiological characteristics determined
within the human genetic code. An adult's specific desire for milk and cereal
in the morning, on the other hand, cannot be explained genetically; rather, it
is a learned (cultural) response to morning hunger. Culture, as a body of
learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like
a template (ie. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and
consciousness within a human society from generation to generation. So culture
resides in all learned behavior and in some shaping template or
consciousness prior to behavior as well (that is, a "cultural template"
can be in place prior to the birth of an individual person).

This
primary concept of a shaping template and body of learned behaviors might be
further broken down into the following categories, each of which is an
important element of cultural systems:

systems of meaning, of which
language is primary
ways of organizing
society, from kinship groups to states and multi-national corporations
the distinctive
techniques of a group and their characteristic products

Several important principles follow from this definition of culture:

If the process of
learning is an essential characteristic of culture, then teaching also is
a crucial characteristic. The way culture is taught and reproduced (see reproduction in the
glossary) is itself an important component of culture.
Because the relationship
between what is taught and what is learned is not absolute (some of what
is taught is lost, while new discoveries are constantly being made),
culture exists in a constant state of change.
Meaning systems consist
of negotiated agreements -- members of a human society must agree to
relationships between a word, behavior, or other symbol and its
corresponding significance or meaning. To the extent that culture consists
of systems of meaning, it also consists of negotiated agreements and
processes of negotiation.
Because meaning systems
involve relationships which are not essential and universal (the word
"door" has no essential connection to the physical object -- we
simply agree that it shall have that meaning when we speak or write in
English), different human societies will inevitably agree upon different
relationships and meanings; this a relativistic way of
describing culture.

If you have read through other discussions/definitions of culture on
these pages, you probably already have the sense that there is much
disagreement about the word and concept "culture" and you probably
already realize that any definition, this one included, is part of an ongoing
conversation (and negotiation) about what we should take "culture" to
mean. For a very brief history of this debate, see the glossary entry for
"culture"; for
interpretive discussions and explorations of culture, visit the "Exploring
Culture" section of these pages.

thank you prother
merci..-

thank you brother
merci..-

CULTURE and civilisation

CULTURE and civilisation

رد: CULTURE and civilisation

رد: CULTURE and civilisation