Is It Time to Drop the Word: "Culture"?
If owls can be a parliament, then I can be more precise.
I have grown increasingly uncomfortable when I hear people use the word: “culture.” I hear statements like, “this message flies in the face of what the culture tells us.” Sometimes I hear someone express the desire to be “counter-cultural,” or make broad claims: “The culture is full of hate these days.”
I am not a sociologist, and I have not read Weber or Du Bois. I simply have a working definition of culture as a set of shared beliefs, norms, and practices of a group.
In my own experience the term “culture” without any other qualifiers or descriptive context has become less and less valuable in general conversation.1
Social interactions are no longer contained by geography. How am I to know whether the people I am discussing with will have a shared picture of what “culture” means. Even if I only talk to my geographic neighbors or family, I know they are engaged in conversations with digital neighbors. So much experience is self-curated online. People opt in and out of conversations, such that I rarely know where the common ground might start. If I were to claim that today’s culture is too [blank]. It is unclear what group of social beliefs and practices that I am describing.
Best case, this term can be used with other qualifying words (e.g. New York culture, Homeschool Christian culture). But please, not “internet culture.” It is too vague! Are you talking about Reddit culture or Twitter culture? Let’s be more specific. Are you talking about the egoism of the creative writing community on Substack, the eccentric devotion of the Georgist Substack culture, or are you referring to how people will quote their intellectual heroes in Substack Notes to get a few likes?
Individuals hold beliefs and act out practices. Yes, some individuals share beliefs with others, but I am willing to claim that they will always hold at least one different belief from one another. People do organize around certain beliefs, but by viewing the world in terms of the groups that result from this sorting by itself is not healthy. Why not? I think that this leads to simplistic and untrue stories that pit people against each other. It fails to uphold the dignity of the individual. People hold different beliefs and that is good.
So, stop blaming “the culture” and let’s talk about values and specific ideas instead. If we can have a discussion on the merits of the ideas and practices, then maybe we can break out of the culture war.
If I adopt a stance of being counter-cultural without knowing exactly what beliefs and values I hold, I will be a directionless reactionary, entertaining myself and building an ego. I do not want to invest my mental resources in a wasteful negative-sum game of group conflict.
Perhaps I am recognizing a flaw in my own discourse. I use generalizations in complaints. I am imprecise in my speech. I ask rambling questions in classes. I would like practice what I am advocating here.
In economics I might use “informal institutions” instead of saying culture, but this is a term from specific conversations about economic growth. Outside of the context of that conversation, I would have to risk defining myself every time I used it.