Culture is the invisible bond which ties people together. It refers to the pattern of human activity. The art, literature, language, and religion of a community represent its culture. Our cultural values and beliefs manifest themselves through our lifestyle. Our moral values represent our culture. The importance of culture lies in its close association with the ways of thinking and living. Differences in cultures have led to a diversity in the people from different parts of the world.
Culture is related to the development of our attitude. Our cultural values influence how we approach living. According to the behaviorist definition of culture, it is the ultimate system of social control where people monitor their own standards and behavior. Our cultural values serve as the founding principles of our life. They shape our thinking, behavior, and personality.
Importance of Culture
Culture has great importance. Culture is the identity of the nation, without culture the society is impossible. An author says about the importance of culture that “culture is the set of transmitted and learned behavior patterns, beliefs, institutions and all other products of human work and thought that characterize the functioning of particular population, profession, organization or community”, so the only representative of the particular community or population is the culture. Culture is the basic root of any community which gives them the ways of life. The culture provides solution to the critical problem that is faced to community. Culture teach us to think for the whole nation not individually, it provide the concept of family, nation etc.
The cultural values of a community give it an identity of its own. A community gains a character and a personality of its own, because of the culture of its people. Culture is shared by the members of a community. It is learned and passed from the older generations to the newer ones. For an effective transfer of culture from one generation to another, it has to be translated into symbols. Language, art, and religion serve as the symbolic means of transfer of cultural values between generations.
Culture is a bond that ties the people of a region or community together. It is that one common bond, which brings the people of a community together. The customs and traditions that the people of a community follow, the festivals they celebrate, the kind of clothing they wear, the food they eat, and most importantly, the cultural values they adhere to, bind them together. The cultural values help develop a sense of belonging, and a feeling of unity in the minds of the people of that particular culture. People of a culture share their traditions and to a certain extent, their ideologies. They have a similar way of thinking and living. If they belong to the same religion, their belief system is the same, which further leads to a feeling of oneness among them.
Culture is seen as a system of social control, wherein people shape their standards and behavior. The cultural values form the founding principles of one’s life. They influence one’s principles and philosophy of living. They impact our way of living and thus affect our social life.
The cultural heritage of a society includes the way it is socially and politically organized. It also involves the mythological and philosophical concepts of that society and its science and literature. When the term is used in its adjective form as ‘cultured’, it is used to mean the degree of sophistication in the manners and education of the people who belong to that culture.
The importance of culture lies in the fact that it is a link between people and their value systems.
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