..
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| Culture
is everything symbolic we learn: |
....
| All
culture is learned but not everything learned is cultural. |
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| That
learning starts at birth (some say earlier) and continues until death.
It is a process of becoming human. |
.
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| 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. |
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| A
symbol is something that stands for something else. |
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| We
learn things by attaching meanings to the symbols we use to communicate.
That applies to all six dimensions. |
.
| Llist
each of the dimensions and explain how they are stored and transmitted
by symbols. |
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| Language
is a complex system of symbols. |
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| Symbols
have no meaning unless humans attach meanings to them, and communicate
those meaning to each other. |
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| 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. |
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| Such
information is biological. |
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| Some
engineers (especially university 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. |
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| 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). |
. |
