Is Culture progressive or repressing individualism?

Understanding Culture and behaviour.

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and the arts.

The Centre for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition goes a step further in defining culture: as shared patterns of behaviours and interactions, cognitive constructs and understanding that are learned by socialization. Thus, culture can be seen as the growth of a group identity that has been fostered by social patterns unique to the group. 

“Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones, and a million other things,” Cristina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College in London, said.

Some other experts argue that behaviour determines culture, and culture determines behaviour. Which makes the topic more complicated. These complications make the topic of culture must more fascinating to study. Albert Bandura at Stanford University looks at culture and behaviour through a model he has labelled reciprocal determinism.

He developed this model to respond to the overly simplistic approaches that were popular in the 70s. The first of these approaches imagined that behaviour was determined entirely by genes and personality. The second imagined that behaviour was determined entirely by the environment.

Over time, the idea that the identity of a people is in their culture has come to be understood that each culture has its rhythm and attractions. The longer people are separated from their known culture the more they will adapt to a new one. Humans long for some order in the larger scale of things and also seek acceptance while fearing rejection, the disappointment of their loved ones and exploring theirs.

It is the same reason why people are worried when they are introducing a new partner, a friend or an associate to their household, they are even more afraid if they come from a different culture. This could imply to be different social status, lifestyle, geographical location and exposure. Rich and middle class, rank and no rank, prince and a commoner, educated and non, same tribe and different ethnicity.

The fear of stepping outside these designated cultural boundaries has kept people locked up, living a lie and enduring for acceptance. It was these same demarcations that parents have come to pass on through home training and etiquettes allowing the environment to determine cultural behaviour

Does conforming to culture make people better? 

Conformity to social norms is more likely in Eastern collectivistic cultures than in Western independent cultures. Psychological reactance occurs when people feel that their ability to choose which behaviours to engage in is eliminated or threatened with elimination. The goal of conforming to society seeks eternal harmony. People who choose to take this path want to see their society continue to benefit others in positive ways. One of the outcomes of this process is to distribute work fairly throughout the group. 

Therefore, the threat of external force is unpleasant, and people don’t like it. While it may always be lurking in the background, cultures are more effective at suppressing individualism, making human beings ignore their consciences, sometimes to the point of committing atrocities.

In homogeneous culture, people tend to deal with a limited pool of information. When one is living in a culture whose members tend to be opposed to abortion rights, it’s unlikely that they will ever hear any argument in favour of these rights. With their limited information, they are more likely to move in the direction of opposing abortion rights rather than supporting them. Cass Sunstein states that “Much of the time, it is in the interest of the individual to follow the crowd, but in the social interest for individuals to say and do what they think best”. This raises the question: are individuals living for the majority led by limited knowledge? Experts believe that individualists promote the exercise of one’s goals and desires and to value independence and self-reliance and advocate that the interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group while opposing external interference upon one’s interests by society or institutions.  

So, Is Culture progressive or repressing individualism? 

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