Culture is an in-the-eye-of-the-beholder kind of thing.
“People like us do things like this,” says goat Seth Godin.
The first thing that comes to mind for me when I think of culture is visual art. Museums, galleries, schools, styles, periods, media, people, intrinsic meaning, commissioned, not-commissioned. I think of this because that’s what I know, and it resonates with me.
And why not?
Culture are the “customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.” says Google. In a broad stroke, I resonate with the art world—more specifically, the artist’s generosity and a brave and disrupting message. And down the rabbit hole we go.
Why is culture important?
Culture is an identity for people, which Seth eludes to. Purpose is a beautiful thing, and culture is how purpose runs wild in the hearts of people.
Culture creates.
Culture expresses.
Culture propagates.
Skateboarding, hip hop, dance, moonshining, illegal grows, Vincent and Gauguin, bloggers. Culture comes from the bottom.
Culture, at large, is a value system.
It’s interesting to see the merging of business and culture.
“Good businesses” see opportunities within cultures and respectfully give their services to the people of that culture community. The best businesses are made of those people in the culture, and can speak to the culture, and maybe even drive it at times. Exploitation is bound to follow as well. Toilet paper & mask hoarding anyone?
I spent the majority of my youth in the 80s & 90s, and there was a word when you tried to be something you weren’t. Poser.
A poser is someone who claims to be something before they are that thing. There is an inherit humility you have to take when you begin something. Why?—because you’re a guppy among sharks, you’re not even on their menu.
The difference between a poser, or a capitalist, and an artist, or any doer, is someone trying to convince, and the other is informing and sharing—a work in progress.
With any cultural activity, there is a lure for a common practice or ritual. Meaning the people are self-propelled by the value they receive by doing the
thing.
The reward is the process, the event, the love that gives those community members the acceptance, drive, inspiration, and support to continue to develop.
A huge shake up in the art world right now are NFTs. Non Fungible Tokens are completely upending traditional art and the business of art by cutting out the middle men and women. And for that I’m grateful because the cream always rises to the top.
If you think about the way ‘culture’ manifests, the actions are true and powerful because they are an outlet of love. To choose something else other than going home to a dysfunctional family. To choose music and staying late at school working bars to avoid being around the kids who do things that may cause them to end up behind bars.