Are cultures collective delusions?

[tsihcrana]

The title pretty much sums the argument. Strip a culture of it's pointless practices, unfounded beliefs, mythologies, empty traditions, ideologies, superstitions, religions, fashions etc and what you have left is no culture at all, but instead empirical truth. The kind all humanity generally shares in common. I can't think of a single aspect of culture that isn't some form of delusion. Then we go and double down on our irrationality by being partriotic/proud of our delusions. It's weird.

It might seem like I'm railing against culture here, but I don't really dislike it. I just thinks it's kind of odd, as are sentiments like patriotism. But they're interesting because they're odd. Making a meal of life would be pretty boring without a little delusiono-cultural spice.

[Steve3007]

Perhaps if we're patristic/proud of our delusions, but with a sense of perspective as to why we are, it's not so bad?

[tsihcrana]

I agree. I'm proud of being a unicorn, and it's "not like there's anything wrong with that".

[Terrapin Station]

The question and your first post doesn't really make sense to me.

Let's just take one element of culture--let's say clothing (or "fashion") conventions.

How would that be a "delusion"?

Maybe you'd say it's a "pointless practice" or "empty tradition," but those seem simply like subjective value judgments on your part. Maybe you don't care about such things, but it doesn't make any sense to me calling something like clothing conventions a "delusion."

[tsihcrana]

Yeah, you're right. Poor word choice. I was running with the notion that people ascribing value to practices/traditions/etc en masse and for no valid reason other than "that's what everyone else around here is doing" seemed like some flight of fancy, some departure from common sense. I aught to have found a word for 'ascribing false value to arbitrary beliefs'.

Thanks for pointing it out.

[tsihcrana]

Actually, even 'false value' doesn't work (wish there was an edit tab on this forum). Values are inherently subjective and there's never anything false about them.

[Terrapin Station]

Right, values can't be true or false. Re following customs, that's kind of the whole gist of what culture is. Sometimes there are non-"abitrary" reasons for some cultural thing (like clothing conventions for protection from the local elements), sometimes there aren't.

A lot of it comes down to the simple fact that one is going to learn things from and be influenced by things in one's environment. You learn how to use a language, how to make food, how to make music and so on from those around you. So culture kind of works like a massive/internetworked/long-lasting game of "telephone," to some extent by necessity, and like "telephone" it's not transmitted exactly from person to person, but it gradually evolves into other expressions.

I don't know if there would really be any way around that, because humans really aren't a type of creature where each individual could "reinvent all of the wheels" as if they're in complete isolation from each other. For one, human infants can't even survive on their own. They need a lot of assistance for quite a few years. A human baby/infant/toddler left all on its own, so that it has to find its own shelter, food, etc., is going to be a dead baby/infant/toddler. So humans have to closely interact with and learn things from other humans, and that's going to result in following certain ways of doing things that aren't the only possible way to do them.

[tsihcrana]

Right, values can't be true or false. Re following customs, that's kind of the whole gist of what culture is. Sometimes there are non-"abitrary" reasons for some cultural thing (like clothing conventions for protection from the local elements), sometimes there aren't.

A lot of it comes down to the simple fact that one is going to learn things from and be influenced by things in one's environment. You learn how to use a language, how to make food, how to make music and so on from those around you. So culture kind of works like a massive/internetworked/long-lasting game of "telephone," to some extent by necessity, and like "telephone" it's not transmitted exactly from person to person, but it gradually evolves into other expressions.

I don't know if there would really be any way around that, because humans really aren't a type of creature where each individual could "reinvent all of the wheels" as if they're in complete isolation from each other. For one, human infants can't even survive on their own. They need a lot of assistance for quite a few years. A human baby/infant/toddler left all on its own, so that it has to find its own shelter, food, etc., is going to be a dead baby/infant/toddler. So humans have to closely interact with and learn things from other humans, and that's going to result in following certain ways of doing things that aren't the only possible way to do them.

I agree with all that, and concede my initial position. It was ill-conceived.

[Sculptor1]

The title pretty much sums the argument. Strip a culture of it's pointless practices, unfounded beliefs, mythologies, empty traditions, ideologies, superstitions, religions, fashions etc and what you have left is no culture at all, but instead empirical truth. The kind all humanity generally shares in common. I can't think of a single aspect of culture that isn't some form of delusion. Then we go and double down on our irrationality by being partriotic/proud of our delusions. It's weird.

It might seem like I'm railing against culture here, but I don't really dislike it. I just thinks it's kind of odd, as are sentiments like patriotism. But they're interesting because they're odd. Making a meal of life would be pretty boring without a little delusiono-cultural spice.

It's true to the extent that "a Culture" is somehow an ethnically or nationally bounded entity.
"Human Culture" is what you make it. But the concept and the self determined an arbitrary boundaries of "race", and "nation" which are characterises as this or that culture are, as you say mythological and supersititious.
What is more, is, that they are most often dangerous vanoties which contoue to keep humans in conflict.

However culture can be boundless and open to all who would wish to fourish and enjoy it. Musical culture provided it is not bounded as "black" or "white" is avaliable to enrich the lives of any who appraciate it. Art and literature, (provided again the it is not bounded) can be free to all.

[stevie]

Cultures are continually changing and are necessary for evolution. Without cultures there couldn't be cognition which is essential for humans. So the question whether cultures are delusions or not isn't relevant because cultures and humans are inseparable..

[tsihcrana]

Cultures are continually changing and are necessary for evolution. Without cultures there couldn't be cognition which is essential for humans. So the question whether cultures are delusions or not isn't relevant because cultures and humans are inseparable..

I'm not sure cultures are 'necessary for the evolution of anything except more refined culture. Such a statement inherently calls for me to define the boundaries of whatever thing I'm calling 'culture' though, and that's a slippery slope.

Culture, to me, refers to things like linguistics and fashion only to the extent of idiosyncracy, so (for instance) the English language doesn't define part of American culture so much as the idiosyncrasies of American English define it. The fact that we use clothes for protection isn't culture, but regional trends in fashion are. To me the things that make up culture are arbitrary. The meanings of words are (for these purposes) non-arbitrary, as is maths/physics/chemistry/etc, so these don't constitute culture. I haven't adopted English culture if I learn English, or Western culture if I learn electrical engineering (as examples), but if I speak 'like' an Englishman, or make techno-gadgets aesthetically 'reminiscent of' Western culture, then I'm adopting some part of their culture.

I definitely disagree with you that culture is necessary for cognition. A person can develop notions about the world and perform mental functions thereupon entirely independent from all cultural influence. Say Adam was born in some jungle somewhere where he was accidentally misplaced and, by some inexplicable miracle, survived to the age of 10 without any contact with human beings. By then he would have formulated some rudimentary understanding of the world around him and would be fully able to cogitate what would happen when a branch falls from a tree, or the best way to retrieve fruit from a high branch, or realize that finding a safe warm place to spend the night is better than sleeping exposed... Culture is an outgrowth of cognitive capacity, not a causal influence of it.

[stevie]

I definitely disagree with you that culture is necessary for cognition. A person can develop notions about the world and perform mental functions thereupon entirely independent from all cultural influence....

Hmh ... I don't think so because a particular language and all kinds of corresponding linguistic expressions are an essential part of a particular culture and I can't see how conceptual thinking could be " entirely independent" of learning a particular "native" language.

[tsihcrana]

I definitely disagree with you that culture is necessary for cognition. A person can develop notions about the world and perform mental functions thereupon entirely independent from all cultural influence....

Hmh ... I don't think so because a particular language and all kinds of corresponding linguistic expressions are an essential part of a particular culture and I can't see how conceptual thinking could be " entirely independent" of learning a particular "native" language.

Language 'expresses' thoughts/conceptions. It doesn't necessarily originate them. It is impossible to ascribe a symbol-object relationship without first conceptualising the object boundaries. If we're listening to, or reading, another's words then yes, their words influence our thoughts. However, when we formulate our own language some cognition must always precede the expression of it, else all you have is language (somehow) expressing itself. Consider how many times people say something along the lines of "it's hard to put into words" - there must be a 'something' to be put into words.

[LuckyR]

Rather than concentrate on the word "delusion", which the OP has retracted, I would focus of the word "collective". Some on this Forum eschew the concept and deny there is an entity called society, let alone culture and treat a community as just a series of individuals who can be understood and described by their individual traits and behaviors. I happen to agree with the observation that group behavior is different than multiples of individual behavior. Thus the need for both psychology and sociology.

[tsihcrana]

Rather than concentrate on the word "delusion", which the OP has retracted, I would focus of the word "collective". Some on this Forum eschew the concept and deny there is an entity called society, let alone culture and treat a community as just a series of individuals who can be understood and described by their individual traits and behaviors. I happen to agree with the observation that group behavior is different than multiples of individual behavior. Thus the need for both psychology and sociology.

I tend to think of the concept of 'culture' as valid but, as with most large-scale categories that apply to real-world observational phenomena, it lacks any kind of finite boundary, so any attempt at delineating one will lead one into difficulty and contradiction.

Analyzing the exact boundaries of a nebulous term like 'culture' is difficult because categorization in general diminishes appreciation of individual characteristics, and the greater the breadth of the category, the less individuation is evident. Delineating the precise boundaries of large-scale categories requires 'zooming back in' to the level where individual differences become important. But then you're altering the scale, which then departs from and undermines the meaning ascribed to the category in the first place. Scale matters, and when you alter it you start talking about different groups of characteristics.

There are no two apples exactly alike, for instance, but we still label them all the same. When we consider a single apple we might notice it's shine, shape, texture, colouration and patterning, weight, density, crispness, taste, acidity, and so on. But as soon as you consider two apples as a category called 'apples' you've suddenly dispensed with everything that makes each apple unique and concentrated on what makes them (somewhat) alike, which is a much smaller pool of information. The more apples you bring together the less they all have in common, and the less individual information becomes relevant. The pool of attributes they share in common shrinks. If you try to define what constitutes the large-scale category 'apples' by minute investigation of each constituent apple you'll immediately run into problems due to changing scale, the inherent uniqueness of each constituent apple, and outlier characteristics that begin to stretch the category boundaries beyond what is practicable/reasonable.

So I would argue that, although the boundaries of the category 'culture' break down under scrutiny, that doesn't entirely invalidate the concept, it just sidesteps the scale at which the category is meant to be applied.