My views on culture

At some point of the class, we talked about culture and how it can be defined in many various ways.
Is culture some observable habits like food, clothing or flags? Is culture more about behaviours and customs that have been learned and passed from generation to generation? Maybe culture is based on beliefs, symbols, values or even how problems or particular situations are approched. And most importantly, does culture define an individual?

I think that culture defines our way of life. It assembles our values, beliefs,customs, languages and traditions. It is also reflected by our history and our way of expressing ideas and creativity. Culture can be a good indication of one's quality of life, how dynamic we are and the health of our society. It gives us a sense of belonging (shoutout to Mr James for knowledge I have learnt in Psychology class) that is after all one of the most basic needs of humans, as well as the ability to feel empathy and create relationships with other people. People from more solid and dynamic cultures will understand health, well being, self esteem and a lot of other important topics better.  Nature is one thing that can be transmitted by heredity, but culture is transmitted by heritage. That being said, it can be concluded that culture does that an influence on how we behave because it is based on the values and norms of a society and it is transmitted by education. And it is also very interesting to study different kinds of culture to be able to comprehend better and be able to be more appreciative towards cultural differences.

Culture doesn't need to have to come from a particular region a person is from, it can be also art as that is a part of cultural creations. These artists whether they are writers or musicians are in the heart of the process of making a variety of artworks that contribute to our daily lives, and it doesn't mean that the artist doesn't belong to the same culture as we identify that we cannot enjoy their work.

What made me think is the expression of a "cultivated person", making culture define the result of a process that made an individual. Cultivated people are known to be open minded people that have knowledge in many domains such as science, art and philosophy. Does this mean that the process of the education that this individual has had forms them into having a larger spirit therefore larger culture? Depending on where you are, your culture will be different, but doesn't you are in a group with people that you all have the same culture. Having different backgrounds makes us all different and we have the chance to discover different people and learn more about cultures we may have never found out about. But does that mean that in a small city where everyone knows each other and don't really have contact or exchange with the outside world mean they are all culturally identical? I don't have any particular counter argument to that so I think they are probably culturally identical or at least 90%.

Now if culture defines all the ways any society may act the same way, that means that there is no human society that lacks culture. There is no segregation between civilised and uncivilised people but rather different civilisations. Therefore, every society has a tendency to confuse their own culture or civilisation with the culture or civilisation which can go to drastic consequences as rejecting other people that belong to different cultures.  I would like to end this blog post with a conclusion that culture is so vast and complicated and it just gave me a headache.

First post

During my first lessons of TOK, I have learnt 3 notions:

The first being about how we know things? How can you be completely be certain of something? Truth is, there is no actual way to knowing if anything around us is real. Human beings tend to put assumptions on the thing around them, and until they are proven wrong, usually they stick with their assumptions. Things could be known through reason, sense of perception, emotion, faith, intuition, imagination, memory and language, and a lot of these ways of knowing can be altered, causing only to imagine whether or not humanity exists.

The second is about maps. Yes maps, if you go to Miss Alex’s classroom you will see them everywhere. Even if from a distance they may be similar, there is actually a large variety of maps. They all differ as it’s authors make them different depending on the culture and the message trying to be send, which leaves the door open for interpretation. It could be a map of the world, an amusement park , a mall, a country, a metro station and the possibilities are limitless . To me, the metaphor of maps is reliable and reveals itself inadequately to describe the placement of a larger place  on a paper with a smaller scale, even if it also inaccurate as it does not show the total truth. This metaphor of map is something very helpful for us in the course because the notion of something so reliable yet inaccurate is something that will be recurrent. This was able to open my mind in the possibility that tools I may rely on a day to day basis are inaccurate. Maps can be differentiated by the time it was made and by it’s author. It was once believed that the earth is flat and the American continent did not exist. Will all the technology in the world and the knowledge in science, mistakes are still made and maps are not up to the right scale. These ideas can be applied to Geography and History classes, even if I only take history. I think that the idea that maps vary through time shows the evolution of populations and mindset. The world cannot be navigated with a completely accurate map, as it is impossible to create it and the perfection will make it challenging if not impossible to navigate. I think that there is always possibility of human mistake and the perfect scale has to be a 1.1 ration, which is impossible to make at some times.

The third concept is certainty which is the one that interested me the most. Is it enough to be certain to live in the truth? Long ago humans did believe that the sun turned around the earth. So is it enough to be certain? Certainty is a feeling and it is not a criteria strong enough because most of the things we are certain of are opinions, they come from the inside, our education, society or media and we accept them without thinking. Certainty can also be seen as an obstacle to find the truth, of the things we dont know and science sadly will be satisfied merely by the certainty which can be an unreliable feeling. Certainty is also a necessary criteria as we cannot ask for proof for everything without condemning ourselves to an intercity of searching for the answer to our hypothesises, there will come moments where we need to stop interrogating ourselves if we want to believe or think about something. Also if we refuse to trust our certainty we will fall in scepticism that will make us fall into the conclusion that nothing is real. I think that the only way to not be blinded by misleading certainty is by cultivating ourselves by interrogating ourselves and considering that nothing is certain. Otherwise, you have to trust your certainties because they are useful and help you construct a train of thought and reacting. We are always right if we are ready to question our certainties