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The aesthetic & values
dimension of culture is a structure of ideas, sometimes paradoxical, inconsistent,
or contradictory, that people have about good and bad, about beautiful
and ugly, and about right and wrong.
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| They are the justifications
that people cite to explain their actions and interaction. |
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| The three axes along which people
make judgements are all dependent upon what they learn from childhood. |
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| These include judging between right
and wrong, between good and bad, and between beautiful and ugly, all based
upon social and community values. |
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| They are not acquired
through our genes, but through our socialization. |
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| That implies that they
can be relearned; that we could change our judgements. |
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| Because we are animals, however,
and learn different things at different stages, we should not assume that
everything learned can be unlearned. |
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| Values are incredibly difficult to
change in a community, especially if residents perceive that an attempt
is being made to change them. |
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| They do change, as community standards
evolve, but that change can not be rushed or guided through outside influence
or by conscious manipulation. |
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| Shared community standards are important
in community and personal identity; who one is very much is a matter of
what values in which one believes. |
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| The degree to which community or
organizational members share values, and/or respect each others' values,
is an important component among the sixteen elements of strength and capacity. |
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| Values tend to change as the community
grows more complex, more heterogeneous, more connected to the world. |
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| Changes in values tend to result
more from changes in technology and changes in social organisation, and
less from preaching or lecturing for direct changes. |
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| It appears that there is no overall
direction of values change in human history, that judgements become more
liberal, more tolerant, more catholic, more eclectic ―
or less ―
as societies become more complex and sophisticated. |
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| Communities at either end of the
social complexity spectrum display standards of various degrees or rigidity. |
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| In spite of that range across all
communities, within any community there is usually a narrow range of values
among residents. |
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| Urban and heterogeneous communities
tend to have a wider variation in values and aesthetics |
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| Communities that are more complex
and that have a wider gap of inequality (hierarchical),
a wider range in power and wealth, tend to have a wider range of prestige
assigned to people. |
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| It is not easy to predict the value
standards of any community before you go to live there and to find out
how to operate within the community. |
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| Because of their importance, however,
it is necessary that you, the social researcher or mobilizer, learn as
much as you can about community standards, and do not assume that they
will be the same as your own. |
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