The Dictionary Definition of “Culture”
An online dictionary defines culture as:
“…the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group
also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time…” (Definition of “Culture”, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture )
A “belief” is an idea or set of ideas.
“Social forms” are presumably things like legal and political institutions, customs, and morals of a people.
“Material traits” would likely be things like the architecture, art, forms of entertainment, and methods of producing the material values necessary for survival.
“Way of life” I would assume to be something like: How people live, and what they consider to be important.
For instance, the “way of life” of medieval European people was church-centered, with a small hereditary elite, the nobility, in control of governmental institutions. This elite gave little provision for the dignity and importance of the individual lives of the rest of the population. The majority of the population lived at subsistence levels as farmers, tied to the land. (The serfs.)
This contrasts with modern, western nations, in which religious institutions are generally separated from the organs of state power. Governmental institutions are believed to derive their power from the bulk of the adult population, in theory, even if not always in practice. The majority of the population performs some sort of technology or industrial-based labor, rather than farming. Individuality is more valued. Individual freedom is considered important, even if most modern persons also believe it must occasionally be overridden to advance some alleged “collective” or “group interest”.
“Beliefs” and “ways of life” both imply a set of concepts and value-systems. At root, a particular group’s “culture” lies in the ideas and patterns of thinking they hold. These in turn affect their actions and behavior.
For instance, most medieval Europeans believed forgiveness of their sins could only be achieved through the church. Their actions would have reflected these beliefs with regular church-attendance, and confession to their local priest. When Pope Urban II urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the First Crusade, the people listened. The set of ideas and patterns of thinking they held, influenced their actions. It’s doubtful today that the Pope could bring about a call to arms, even of the most devout Catholics. A declaration of war by a modern Pope would make people doubt his sanity, not fall out for military service. Politics are not considered the Church’s province in the minds of a modern Catholic, at least not to this degree.
Ayn Rand On Culture:
“A nation’s culture is the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men, which their fellow-citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life. Since a culture is a complex battleground of different ideas and influences, to speak of a “culture” is to speak only of the dominant ideas, always allowing for the existence of dissenters and exceptions.” (Philosophy: Who Needs It, “Don’t Let It Go”, Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/culture.html )
Marxism on Culture:
Not everyone sees ideas or beliefs as an important causal element in what forms the basis of a “culture”. In fact, some thinkers have reversed cause and effect, making ideas and beliefs more of a product of particular social organizations.
Marx believes that ideas are nothing but a rationalization for the dominant class and one’s “material existence” (whether he is Proletarian or Bourgeois):
“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto)
“But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto.)
Marx views the causation as reversed. Your “economical conditions of existence of your class” and your “method of production” determines your ideas, and therefore, your “culture”.
For Marx, it’s not just that someone is born to particular parents, then adopts the ideas of their parents and elders around them, by “mental default”. If that is all he means, then he could simply say: “A person’s culture tends to be the same as the ideas and attitudes of their parents and elders.” One’s “method of production” would have nothing to do with it. Plus, this would be an incomplete explanation, since cultures clearly do change over time. On this explanation, how have human beings gone from hunter-gatherers, to agriculturalists, to a modern industrial and technological civilization?
Furthermore, the phenomena of the change and evolution of the culture of particular groups of people has been noted by scholars. In his book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, Thomas Sowell observes how the white portions of the American South were originally populated by Scots and Irish who brought with them ideas, attitudes and beliefs that lasted after those same cultural patterns had largely died out in Great Britain:
“…a common subculture that goes back for centuries, which has encompassed everything from ways of talking to attitudes toward education, violence, and sex -and which originated not in the South, but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South.” (Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Location 79 of 7391, Kindel Ed., Thomas Sowell)
Why do cultures sometimes change for the better?
Since a culture is nothing but human knowledge, the question becomes: “Why do human beings use their minds to gain knowledge, and prefer correct ideas to incorrect ideas?”
In the realm of material production, the answer is clear. Human beings learn new manufacturing techniques because it makes the production of the material values necessary for their survival easier, or it allows them to produce more values with the same level of effort.
Human beings learned how to make fire because it warmed them on cold nights, and allowed them to cook their food. They learned how to make the bow and arrow because they could take down bigger animals, and defend themselves from others, more effectively. Human beings learned how to make penicillin because it protected them from infections that would have otherwise killed them.
In the field of law, why did human beings go from the absolute rule of monarchs in medieval Europe to rule of law and republican forms of government? Because they found that their lives were less secure when a single man or a group of men had absolute power over their property, freedom, and lives. For those who wanted to live, a constitutional Republic, or constitutional Monarchy, better secured their lives.
Why do some cultures change for the worse?
This is a more difficult question to answer. Not all human beings want to live. For those who don’t want to live, no particular type of action is necessary. Fundamentally, those who value something other than living will have no need to conform their actions to the dictates of the laws of nature and reality. If you want to live, you need to grow or hunt for food, and perform a wide range of other actions. For those who don’t want to live, conforming to reality matters very little. Therefore, the truth or falsity of their ideas matter very little. A culture whose people care so little for life will regard building the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the enormous waste of resources and lives it resulted in, as fundamentally better than the buildings of modern-day New York City, which shelter more than 1.5 million people from the elements. Some societies are fundamentally opposed to life. Their architecture, art, and graveyards reflect it. Every culture is, fundamentally, a battle between those who want to live, and those who do not.
The “takeaways” from what has been said about culture so far are this:
(1) A culture is ultimately a product of human ideas, which can be right or wrong.
(2) What makes cultures right or wrong are the dictates of the laws of nature and reality, combined with the desire of most people to live their individual lives.
(3) When we speak of culture as the dominant ideas of a group of people, it must be kept in mind that within a particular culture, there will exist dissenters and exceptions. (This is one way how cultures can change and evolve over time.)
(4) Within a particular geographic area, different groups of people can have different cultures, even though they are under the same political system. This often has to do with their geographic origins in other parts of the world. (For instance, white Southerners in the United States, versus Northern whites, as identified by Thomas Sowell and others.)
Culture Around the World
One other aspect of culture, that hasn’t been expressly identified so far, should be obvious: Since different racial groups originate in different areas of the world with different cultures, when those racial groups come to another land, they will tend to have different cultures. (Even if one considers “race” to be an invalid concept, you can eliminate that term, and this fundamental truth still remains: “Different groups of people, originating from different areas of the world, with different cultures, will have different cultures when they come to another land.”)
When the dominant ideas of a group of people are less in accordance with reality, and make them less successful at living, what should be done? They should be persuaded to adopt better notions, and to change or modify their ideas and behaviors. This persuasion should occur both internally and externally from the culture. People outsides those cultures should do what they can to encourage change, and people from within that culture, who dissent from it, should do what they can to modify it.
Although individuals have rights to life, liberty, and property, cultures, which are merely ideas, have no right to be free from criticism, because of their mere existence. Furthermore, cultural groups that routinely violate individual rights to life liberty, or property can be stopped with an appropriate and proportional use of force from those outside the culture. For instance, a group of people that practices cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice can rightly be dissuaded from continuing such practices, with force if necessary. The only limit to the use of retaliatory force in such circumstances is the rational self-interest of the people outside the culture. (There is no “white man’s burden”, which makes it a duty or obligation to stop the savage practices of less culturally developed people.)
Under no circumstances should people from a more advanced culture attempt to accommodate or give sanction to the ideas of a culture that are inferior to the ideas of the more advanced culture. Doing so would be tantamount to a declaration that ideas don’t have truth or falsity. Since the truth matters for those who want to live, it would be a capitulation by those who want to live to those who do not. The sanction of inferior ideas would destroy the more advanced culture, and lead to nothing but death and misery.
Sometimes a less advanced culture may have some ideas that are superior to those of the generally more advanced culture, in a certain context. For instance, the Norsemen colonizing Greenland in the 10th Century are theorized to have died out, in part, because they were unwilling to adapt to local geographic and biological conditions. They might have been better off adapting some of the hunting practices of the local aboriginal people. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309771/ ) But, this simply shows that no culture is immune from the dictates of reality, if living is their goal. If one moves to a different geographic location, he would have to take that new context into account. He will have to either come up with new technologies, or adapt some of the technologies of others.
Just like one cannot speak of “culture” without recognizing that there may be dissenters within that group of people, so too can one only speak of a culture as more or less “advanced” than another “on the whole”. Medieval Europeans, and certainly post-Renaissance Europeans, had a better conception of science and logic, giving them a greater capacity to adapt better ideas when they encountered them. Such an adaptability is, itself, a cultural trait. It is the concept of “objectivity”, applied to living. It is the willingness to recognize when one’s own particular ideas and patterns of thinking need change and modification to better achieve the goal of living. The European recognition of this fact is found in the high value placed on free speech amongst Europeans and European-descended people. They recognize that the free flow of ideas will allow for the adaption of those notions best suited for living.
Are there cultures in modern-day United States that need to be changed or modified?
Since different people in the United States have different ancestral origins and backgrounds, it is no surprise you can find different cultures within different groups of people here.
The ancestors of most black Americans today came primarily from Africa. (Leaving aside some amount of European DNA through interbreeding.) Since most people uncritically adapt the ideas of their parents and elders over time, the ideas of black Americans reflect this history in Africa and/or the history of their ancestors in the South as slaves.
The cultural differences between the average American with predominate European ancestry, and the average person of mostly African ancestry can be quantified to some extent. What follows is the data I could find from Internet searches on cultural differences between blacks and whites in three areas: (1) Level of superstitious belief; (2) black belief in “conspiracy theories”, especially with respect to medical distrust, and (3) black parenting differences in the realm of corporal punishment of children.
American blacks tend to be more superstitious than white Americans:
73% of black US adults believe evil spirits can harm, versus 54% of all US adults. (Pg. 65)
78% of black US adults believe prayer can heal illness versus 65% of all US adults. (Pg. 65)
“The findings show that majorities of Black Americans believe in a God with a presence in earthly affairs.” (Pg. 54)
48% of Black Americans think God talks to them directly, versus 30% of all US adults. (Pg. 62)
(“Faith Among Black Americans”, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/2021/02/16/faith-among-black-americans/pf_02-16-21_black-religion-00-8/)
Superstition reflects a less scientific worldview. It means a person does not have a firm grasp of concepts like the law of non-contradiction, and of the fact that reality operates in accordance with specific and predictable laws of nature. Superstitious people tend to assume that there is some unknown, and fundamentally unknowable, realm that affects their lives in ways that are essentially unpredictable. So, for instance, they will believe they can petition some supernatural entity in that supernatural place, and obtain benefits that would contradict the facts of reality. This is why someone would believe that prayer can causelessly heal an illness, or that evil spirits can harm them.
Superstitious people will believe that others have special access to a supernatural realm, and can use that access to cause them harm or good. They will tend to believe in things like witches and the “evil eye”. Belief in the “evil eye” is 29% amongst blacks and 36% within Hispanics. Only 11% of whites believe in it. (“Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths” , https://www.pewforum.org/2009/12/09/many-americans-mix-multiple-faiths/)
Black Belief in Conspiracy Theories:
Improper methods of thinking will also tend to affect how one views success or failure in society. If a person does not see their particular set of ideas as having consequences for their lives, then when they see others who are more successful, they will not view their success as the product of better ideas. They will have a tendency to view it as some sort of “cheating” or manipulation of the system. They will see a more successful group as engaging in “theft” of what is “rightfully theirs”, often by some secret, behind-the-scenes, conspiratorial means. A penchant for what is commonly called “conspiracy theory thinking” will be the result:
“Several studies have reported a widespread belief in conspiracy theories among African Americans. Such theories have been shown to have possible deleterious effects, especially when they deal with HIV/AIDS.” ( Simmons, William & Parsons, Sharon. (2005). Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Among African Americans: A Comparison of Elites and Masses. Social Science Quarterly. 86. 582-598. 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00319.x. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4747599_Beliefs_in_Conspiracy_Theories_Among_African_Americans_A_Comparison_of_Elites_and_Masses)
A belief that white doctors are conspiring to harm blacks causes differences in the health and life-spans of whites versus blacks:
“Despite advances regarding access to care and overall treatment, medical mistrust remains an important factor regarding clinical research participation as well as prevention/treatment-seeking behaviors among African American women.” ( Medical Mistrust, HIV-Related Conspiracy Beliefs, and The Need for Cognitive Closure among Urban-Residing African American for Cognitive Closure among Urban-Residing African American Women: An Exploratory Study Women: An Exploratory Study , Jennifer Rae Myers PhD , Howard University, Kelsey Ball PhD , Howard University , Sharlene L. Jeffers MA , Howard University; Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, Valume 11, Issue 4, Article 8, https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1832&context=jhdrp )
Some will point to incidents like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as an explanation for black mistrust of medicine. Using this one incident as the basis for throwing out all of medical science would represent an error in logic. It is the fallacy of hasty generalization. ( https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/logic_in_argumentative_writing/fallacies.html ) If black people are not seeking the assistance of doctors because of this belief, then it is another cultural failing. They need to understand that the bad actions of some doctors, especially when they are government bureaucrats, cannot be generalized to all of medical science. This hasty generalization is another example of how black methods of thinking need to be improved.
Furthermore, even if there had been dozens of such past incidents like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, of particular doctors violating their Hippocratic oaths to perform unethical experiments on black people, this would not justify medical mistrust. Medical science, as such, does not discriminate against black people. It is a recognition of the laws of nature, applied to human health and well-being. There is nothing fundamental to medical science as such that makes it “anti-black” or “pro-white”, anymore than the laws of physics, mathematics, or biology favor a particular group of people. All such incidents indicate is a need for better laws when it comes to issues like consent to medical experimentation, and, more fundamentally, for the government to get out of science, and leave it to the private sector.
If black people believe a past incident like Tuskegee is reason not to seek medical treatment, then they are mistaken, and need to be convinced to abandon this bad cultural trait.
Black Parenting Differences:
In the realm of parenting, there are differences between American blacks and whites that also tend to result in bad outcomes for black children. Black parents are more likely to use corporal punishment on their children. 59% of blacks spank 0-9 year olds, versus 46% of whites. (“Corporal Punishment: Current Rates from a National Survey”, David Finkelhor, Heather Turner, Brittany Kaye Wormuth, Jennifer Vanderminden, Sherry Hamby, Journal of Child and Family Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01426-4 http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV358%20-%20Published%202019.pdf)
Corporal punishment is generally believed to be associated with psychological and developmental problems in children. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17874924/ )
What Is “To Blame” for The State of Black Culture? (It Doesn’t Change What Needs to Occur)
These three instances of cultural differences between blacks and whites leading to negative outcomes for blacks are just a small sampling. They indicate fundamental differences in methods of thinking between blacks and whites, and help to explain why American blacks are behind whites in terms of wealth and well-being. They point to areas of black culture that need to be changed or modified, if blacks are to have any chance of achieving the success of the average white American.
Leftists will tend to say white Americans are at fault for the cultural state of black Americans. They will cite slavery and “Jim Crow” laws. I disagree, but this debate is irrelevant to this discussion. The point is, regardless of who, or what, is to “blame”, black culture is inferior, and needs to be changed. A debate about why black Americans tend to be more superstitious, and to believe in conspiracy theories, is more about the causation and origin of these ideas. The left tends to say that these beliefs originate in the plantation system of the antebellum South. (I think they mostly originate in the black American’s African roots.) But, that historical debate has little to do with the fact that black Americans, to a larger extent, do hold these bad patterns of thinking and beliefs, and it makes them poorer as a result. It doesn’t change the fact that many American blacks need to check their premises, and adopt better ideas for living in the here and now.
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