| ........... |
.
.
..
| Culture
is everything symbolic we learn: |
....
| All culture is learned
but not everything learned is cultural. |
.
| That learning starts at birth (some
say earlier) and continues until death. It is a process of becoming
human. |
.
.
| At age two, when we touch a hot element
on the stove, we learn that it hurts. Not culture. Only when
Mommy says "hot" do we attach a word, a symbol, to the experience. |
.
| A symbol is something
that stands for something else. |
.
| We learn things by attaching meanings
to the symbols we use to communicate. That applies to all six dimensions. |
.
| List each of the dimensions and explain
how they are stored and transmitted by symbols. |
.
| Language is a complex
system of symbols. |
.
| Symbols have no meaning unless humans
attach meanings to them, and communicate those meaning to each other. |
.
| Information that is
transmitted from human to human by genes is not cultural. |
.
| Perhaps, when they
manifest as behaviour, they are instinctual, whatever that means. |
.
| Such information is
biological. |
.
| Some engineers (especially engineering
students) might object to tools being called cultural, but they are. |
.
| They belong to the technological
dimension, and their design, use and modification all require the use of
symbols. |
.
| Culture, and the transmission of
culture by symbols, is not limited to our non sociological definition of
culture, eg ballet, opera and symphonies (high culture) or beer and hockey
(pop culture). |
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