Is There Only One Human Culture?

Recently on Twitter, Gakuranman posted an interesting article:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200805/ther...

He asked for comments, but 140 comments wasn't enough, so I decided to do a Busankevin style response on my way home. Note that the camera ran out of memory right as I was tying up.

How I want to respond is;
- First, I have no background in studying psychology in any way. I know Chomsky for his political ideas more than his linguistic theories.
- At the eat, sleep, crap and root level, I can agree with the assertion that at a basic level, all humans are the same.
- However, if you look at even basic layers of human culture, impulses, emotions, basic verbal communication, sophisticated verbal communication, I think you can find substantial divergence pretty early on.
- I think the desire to believe that there is one single human culture is strong when one comes from a society that is either colonial or cosmopolitan in background. We see different nationalities, races, people all living under the same rules and customs in a society. My point at the end that I didn't fully get in is that while I understand and share the desire to see everyone and all cultures as the same, understanding languages and cultures, particularly of geographically diverse cultures will show pretty quickly that this isn't the right approach for understanding them.

You can follow gakuranman or myself on twitter using our YouTube usernames!

Peace

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• Evolutionary
• Psychology
• Culture
• Single
• gakuranman

[misokatsu99]

You meant assembly (language) not COBOL

[thegakuranman]

Thanks for your thoughts! I have an inkling that we think largely the same way on this issue and that the word 'culture' is misleading. I don't think that all human beings have the same culture - I take culture to be something borne out of the interactions between human beings in a particular place. What I do think is that every human being has the same 'wiring' and biological drive that is capable of manifesting itself in different ways. I'll see if I can make some sort of proper response ^^

[buck22dblaze]

Couldn't agree more. I have split personalities too, because I work in a bilingual environment. Thanks for posting.

[hemi4ku]

It's like a river. A stream connects with another and soon or later they diverge again .

[anfield22]

it would make more sense to me to say that culture is prevalent in all societies, rather than all societies having the same culture.

[anfield22]

all humans have the same culture? if culture can be defined as common behavioural traits within societies, would it not be a term to describe a uniqueness or difference? all humans have the same uniqueness? it's all just word-play to me.

you can claim a correlation between biological and cultural factors, but that falls short of proving causality, since both biological and cultural traits are causally and inextricably linked to geographical limitations of societies.

[NodnarbRS]

One thing I have noticed everywhere I have been is that people ARE people...they (generally) love their kids, love their partners, try to live the best they can...and are generally just good people....generally...but there are many differences.

[chris41188]

The latest trend in psychology is that our behaviour is controlled far more by our genes then we thought, however your environment has the potential to switch on or off certain genes. In say Japan they have a different gene pool with different genes giving them the potential to display different behaviour. Also their environment and diet can also activate genes that westerners may have but are not activated and vice versa, Its generally concluded that people aren't born as blank slates