Attendees
Jason, Mingming, Emma, Nikhil, Gordon, Harish, Vanessa, Alpha, Ashley, Annie, Irene
Moderator
Introduction
Village is a diverse community of people who are genuinely curious about understanding the world and the people around them better. We get together once a month for moderated discussions on important issues like sustainability, health & wellbeing, and education. At last month’s dinner, we discussed rationality vs. emotion. You can read the full write-up on our previous discussion here.
This month, we shifted our focus to culture. As Edgar Schein describes, "There are multiple degrees of culture: the artifacts, the beliefs & values, and then the basic underlying assumptions". Ben Horowitz famously wrote a book called “What you do is who you are” to help leaders build the right culture in their organizations. Culture seems to be a topic that has been studied deeply by many people, ranging from professional contexts to our day-to-day personal life. During VFC dinner #9, we discussed: How do people define culture? Can culture be inherently good or bad? How does culture evolve? Read our full notes below 👇.
What does culture mean to you?
Culture is an abstract network of shared values.
Culture transcends the physical networks that people are part of and thrive in distributed, abstract networks where there are underlying assumptions about specific expectations and behaviors. For example, not all consumption of Jazz music happens in the same places, but there is a transcendent culture of Jazz that permeates the physical world and exists in a distributed way wherever Jazz music is consumed.
Culture is how we experience the world.
If there is culture in being a man or being a woman, for example, there are subjective differences that people experience. Therefore, culture is more subtle than who we are and the ways in which we define ourselves.
Culture depends on the context.
For culture in the context of society, culture could be what people assume to be true. For example, people in the U.S. value the individual – there is a standard belief in American society that each person has value. This may differ from other cultures, where there is less individualism.
One VFC member talked about his personal experience flowing in and out of different cultures (being Indian-American, being from the Midwest and working in tech, etc.) and how the idea of contextually adapting to culture resonated with him. In his view, the time that he is most perceptive of the norms of a culture is when he is separated from that culture (i.e. he is most aware of the norms of Indian culture when participating in more White circles). In other words, culture to him is what makes him feel “othered” in a larger group – the perception of culture is greatest when contrasted against something starkly different.
Can a culture be evaluated as good or bad?
We shifted our conversation from defining culture to evaluating culture when members started to ponder the intersection of culture and values. For example, if there are universal values that we believe we should adopt across all of humanity, what happens when cultures violate these universal values?
If there are universal values, cultures can be evaluated objectively.
If we subscribe to the idea of human rights, which are inherently individualistic because they are rights enshrined in any one person, cultures that violate these human rights can be evaluated negatively. For example, there are some cultures that practice female genital mutilation and treat women as currency. If we believe that it is fundamental that women and men are created equal, then these cultures are unjust because they do not embody this fundamental equality.
Culture transcends right and wrong and therefore can’t be evaluated, it just is.
As cultures change over time and embody new schools of thought and new values, the question is did that culture really change, or did the people within that culture choose to emulate the values of it differently? One member pointed to the history of Indian culture, describing how after the Mughal invasion, Indian culture became this hybrid Hindu-Muslim culture that ultimately led to new schools of thought, new art, etc. Although these changes may seem fundamental to the culture, it could be possible that this is just an embodiment of the culture at a certain point in time, but the culture itself is deeper than the materialization of it and transcends these changes. In that case, it can’t really be judged because culture is deeper than the way in which it is expressed.
Several members expressed counterarguments to this view. Since cultures can be seen as the generally accepted principles of a group, if generally accepted principles are unacceptable or harmful behaviors (assuming we have standard values that we think are just), then that culture can and should be evaluated accordingly.
Ultimately, it seemed like the view from people suggesting that culture was deeper than the materialization of it was that there is a difference between culture and ideology – culture being the inherent existence of different groups and ideology being the things that people within a culture share that can be evaluated as right and wrong. For example, if you take the caste system out of Indian culture, you would still have Indian culture.
The “winning” culture sets the standard for how other cultures are evaluated. Whether or not those cultures should be evaluated is a personal opinion.
For example, historically some non-dominant cultures valued things like human sacrifice (including women and children) as well as mutilation to the body after the sacrifices. These cultures felt that these behaviors were crucial to making the world go round. However, ultimately these cultures lost footing throughout time, and the winning culture across the world became Western culture, which viewed these practices as bad. The question is, what if the dominant culture was actually these historical cultures that practices things such as human sacrifice? Would we not think that those practices were just, if it was the dominant culture to do such things?
One member suggested that if there is a dominant culture, it is inherently the right culture. Otherwise, another culture would arise and dominate.
The context in which we view other cultures is so subjective that there is no way to really evaluate them objectively.
For example, even though Indian culture had an explicit system for ranking individual members of society, does the same inequality not exist in Western societies just without the explicit ranking? The same can be said for human sacrifices – in the U.S. it’s often applauded when 18-year-olds choose to go off to fight for the country, but is that not just a different form of human sacrifice?
How does culture change? How does someone change their own culture?
Small, incremental pushes towards specific directions and desired outcomes.
One member pointed to the example of Nestle trying to sell instant coffee in Japan, even though tea was the dominant caffeinated beverage. People didn’t want to stop drinking tea in favor of coffee, especially because they weren’t used to the flavor. Nestle then developed coffee flavored candy that they sold to children in Japan – over time they developed a desire for that specific flavor and now coffee is a big drink in Japan.
More exposure to new cultures leads to adoption of new values.
For example, one member talked about her own experience in Chinese culture, holding onto specific values very tightly when she came to America, but over time being able to reflect on those values and alter the way she thought about them due to her primarily existing within American culture. This idea touched on the depth of attachment to culture, and how fundamental certain aspects of a culture are to that person’s own identity.
The government.
People pointed to examples of Chinese and Indian governments funding media projects that encourage and idolize nationalism in the pursuit of building a culture of pride within citizens.
Other members also pointed to the example of Singapore – how the government’s quota system for housing and requirements around the makeup of different ethnicities within neighborhoods was very influential to the culture of the country. On the surface, it appears that this intentional mixing of different cultures created a tolerance and possibly even an affinity for diversity within the nation.
Closing thoughts
The main goal of our discussion was to develop a deeper understanding of what culture means to us, and how we could develop a new lens by which to view other cultures and approach experiences with other cultures in different contexts, whether in business or in society or elsewhere. Members had varying views on how and if cultures can be evaluated and how cultures change and adapt over time, whether through top-down, calculated initiatives like those by the government or through unintentional, short exposures by people from the bottom-up. Regardless, having a new framework by which to view the world, different societies, and the cultures within those societies is helpful for developing not only a deeper empathy for others but also for introspection and evaluation of one’s own adopted values and beliefs.
If this post sparked your curiosity at all, consider joining us for our next Village Forecasting Club dinner. Apply to Village here.