Lesson 1: What is Culture?
The Different Uses of the Word
Consider the following:
Mike has just taken his new girlfriend, Justine, to meet his parents. Afterwards, Mike’s mother calls her best friend Barbara to give her the scoop.
“Oh Barbara, this one is so much better than the last one. She has culture. She has a law degree from Harvard. She loves opera and the ballet. And her manners! She’s so polite. We had an excellent French wine with dinner – her choice of course. She’s perfect for Mark. Not like that other heathen he was seeing. She didn’t even know who Picasso was and I don’t think she even knows the theater exists. If an actor doesn’t appear in a soap opera, she has no idea who he is. And her manners! She didn’t even know which fork to use, and we were at a restaurant. How embarrassing. Mark had to show her. The most uncultured girl I’ve ever seen. I don’t know where Mark ever found her.”
How has Mark's mother used the word culture? She’s used to in a sense that causes her to make a value judgment about an individual. Mark’s new girlfriend, Justine, has culture. She loves the arts, has a good education, good taste in wines, and good manners. Therefore, she is the perfect match for her son. The previous girlfriend had no culture or was uncultured. She had no appreciation of the arts and no table manners. This made her an unsuitable mate for her son and most likely, in Mark’s mother’s opinion, an unsuitable person.
The same type of view about culture is also often applied to cities. London, Paris, New York. These cities are all said to have culture, while some may say other cities don’t because they don’t offer the same access to museums, theaters, fine stores and restaurants, ballet and opera.
You, however, can’t take this view of culture with you when you travel. It’s far too judgmental. There are many places in the world where the people have never heard of ballet. But that doesn’t make them uncultured. It makes them different than you and that is precisely what you must realize about different cultures. There is no good, or bad, or right, or wrong. Just differences that you must learn to accept, even if you decide not to adopt them.
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