It is true that early anthropologists looked exclusively outwards, and many still do. The fact is that it is easier to see the peculiarities of other cultures because they can be so different. Anthropology was born, not by wondering about why we do things, but why they do things. This has been roundly challenged since around the 60s, and is particularly apparent in urban anthropology for example. It's harder though, because we do not have those fresh eyes when working with the familiar.
I think that many teaching practices, especially to the young, are stuck in the old anthropological world view of ethnocentrism. To be clear, this does not mean we are better, it means we can understand and explain other cultures with the ideas of our own. We also see this in journalism and it is what I can attribute most of what you say here to, what we admonish in others yet praise in ourselves.
Overall though I think you are implying here that culture is something to transcend, but I think you are missing something in your analysis. Culture cannot be transcended because it is the stuff of human relationships at scale.
Culture is not icing, [Geertz] writes. Biology is not cake. Differences are not necessarily shallow. Likeness is not necessarily deep.
from the cliff notes (no pun intended) on "Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues".
Geertz was a very influential modern anthropologist who, while admittedly writing in a very dense and obfuscating style. One thing that struck me when reading his Thick Description essay was the clarifying of what culture means, and how we miss use the term. I think you have done that here.
This summary of it is worth reading (though it is mainly advice for researchers) and I'd like to pick from it this point:
As a semiotic concept, “culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can causally be attributed; it is a context, something within which [interworked systems of construable signs] can be intelligibly—that is, thickly—described.”
One way in which anthropology differs from sociology is that anthropology deals with smaller amounts of people and sees culture on the small scale and see what is different, peculiar, and embellish with detail etc., whereas sociologists wish to understand humans at the large scale and generalize, reduce and find base similarities.
So I side with the view that there is no "western culture". There is no "American culture". We can only find culture, that is, a meaningful context, at the smaller scale of things. So what we may be talking about it more political. The idea of "unifying" groups of people together into a nation for example requires the development of such terms, and the sweeping away of differences, no matter how futile that is.
That's not to say that there are no cultural similarities between a Texan and a New Yorkian, but the framework to understand each of their actions, speech and so on will be significantly different.
To conclude, what I think when I hear "it is part of our culture" is really "it is part of my culture", which is their understanding of it, and cannot be said to be held by others who are purportedly of the same culture. I agree it is dangerous, not because of culture but because of dogmatic ideology such as nationalism. These statements are more political than cultural and are probably best understood as such.
Thanks for the well thought out reply and the links I will read later.
I have written before about culture and that there really is none in the form that people think if it. Or perhaps there are 7 billion.
People however have the tendency I think to attach themselves to the way they think something is, even though they may act quite differently themselves.
The dangers I see from culture for the individual is that they do not see themselves behind the veil they cover themselves with. I think that who they are and who they think they are are different and therefore a conflict forms between the positions.
I care very little for group culture but it can be a starting point for a person to start to see themselves for who they are as they realise they are actually different from what they identify with. Perhaps it is then they look deeper and find out who they actually are.
And thank you for the thoughtful reply.
This is not evident from what I know or what you say here. I'll have a look at your older posts and see what I see on this but at present I see nothing to contradict the existence of culture in the common understanding of the term, what you refer to as "group culture". I have to assume this comes from a redefinition of terms on your part.
Culture cannot be a meaningful term without more than one person, i.e. a group, so I don't think this qualifier is necessary. The real fact is that culture is in your mind, and everyone elses'. For example, in the most basic sense it consists of the shared metaphors you construct and communicate ideas with other people, the habits which are "normal" and so on.
Deep inner knowledge is often cultural. The tools with which one does this introspection are inherently cultural, often part of a corpus of ancient knowledge, and is a reason why in some areas of the world you will find people which are better at it than in other parts.
This is actually a good example. I observe that some of these tools, like meditation, are like technologies, in that they are tools which "just work", without needing to know how they work, and also, critically, independent of religious or cultural knowledge. However they are often bound up with religious and cultural practices as the means of transmission, and the particular "flavor". What does this say?
Followers of Buddhist Vipassanā meditation, or Christian contemplative prayer, will probably believe that it does not have meaning outside the religious context, and is worthless without it. After all, it's not about the mediation per se, it's about the larger spiritual goal. But the benefits of the meditation work regardless of this. However to perpetuate the shared (re: cultural) meaning and tradition, this context cannot be separated. A simplistic adherent might say they cannot be divided, but clearly they can.
I agree that there are aspects of group life which are dangerous to the individual. Many societies have not had a concept of the individual as we do and so did or do not respect individual liberty especially. This is expressed in the culture and reinforced by it. And all societies have violence against individuals who are perceived to be a threat, in greater or smaller measures.
Culture is made and remade and we are by no means the subjects of it - it does not "happen to us". Certainly it is the context we find ourselves in, but we have the choice of how to continue. The problem, as is usually the case, is people. It's not useful to reject the idea that culture exists. We can and should reject the actions of certain people, perhaps even those people themselves if serious enough. If our cultural knowledge is in conflict with what we need to do, what we see to be true, etc., it needs to be challenged. This is kind of flexibility is common, and something which is always a potential conflict between generations too. I feel like this is what you are doing here, nonspecifically.
One cannot live alone and I think it will always be possible to find likeminded people to commune with, in all senses of the word.
Thanks for the reply, I am really busy, will get back to it later in the evening if that is okay @personz
Great points here, especially: "Culture cannot be transcended because it is the stuff of human relationships at scale."
It reminds me of another quote... I'm paraphrasing heavily here, but it's something like: "Human progress is about taking things we used to have to think about, and finding ways to not need to worry about it anymore" - i.e., we used to have to do complex mathematical computations by hand, now we have computers. We used to need central banks, now blockchain may replace that model. on and on it goes