What is Culture ?
What is culture? Culture is everything that a person learns as a member of a
society. It can also be the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious
or social groups. All of us has his/her own culture, beliefs and different roles, perspectives in our
own lives. We have different point of views and our culture affects our daily lives, it just shows
that we are unique. Culture is a set of beliefs, attitudes and practices that an individual learns
through his or her family, school, church and other social institutions. The process of learning
your own culture is called enculturation. As you interact with your immediate family and peers,
you learn the values and accepted behaviors in your society. Due to constant interaction between
societies, culture can be modified to accommodate desirable traits from other cultures. This
process is called acculturation. Music may be one of the most transferred forms of culture from
one society to another. When the culture of the older generation comes to conflict with the needs
and realities of the younger generation, deculturation happens, where the reason for the culture
has been lost and even the cultural trait itself is in the process of being forgotten. The set of
behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that a person possesses is a part of a greater collection of values
and ideas that is communally owned and practiced by members of the society. This implies that a
particular behavior cannot be considered as a culture if there is only one person practicing it.
Culture is shared intergenerationally. Hence, to share a culture, it must be taught to members of
contemporary society who will, in turn, teach the younger generation. Humans are born into
cultures that have values on beauty and body. As such, they alter their bodies to fit into
physiological norms that are dictated by culture. The interaction between human physiology and
culture is not unilateral. As culture affects the physical traits of a person, culture can also be
defined by the normative physical characteristics of humans. This can easily be seen in the
material culture of the society. The designs of machines and other forms of material culture are
based on the physical traits of a given population. Culture is a tool for survival that humans use
in response to the pressures of the environment. Both the material and the nonmaterial parts of
culture are influenced by the goal of humans to address their needs as dictated by their
environment and their biology. Culture can also cause problems for the people who subscribes to
it. These problems arise when the environment has changed and culture has remained the same.
For example, the “car culture” present in most societies is getting maladaptive as the
environment gets the polluted. In our country, the car industry remains active despite the
economic turmoil it faces as a developing country. This culture is highly maladaptive given the
roads that cater to vehicles are not wide enough. As such traffic problems are constant in the
country. However, we appreciate the value of having cars in the performance of their economic
and personal functions, not to mention the feeling of prestige and sense of accomplishment that a
car brings to its owner. Thus, although considered as somewhat maladaptive, car ownership is
still very much popular in the Philippines. The final characteristics of culture is that it is never
static. This dynamism of culture is due to the changing needs of humans as they interpret and
survive in their environment. As such, culture is continuously reinvented by people. From
clothes that we wear to the food that we eat, culture can be seen as ever changing.
