Culture consists of learned ways of acting, feeling and thinking rather than biologically determined ways, some simple animals act on the basis of information carried in their genes, the parts of a cell that determine inherited traits. This biologically inherited information even includes the animal’s ways of obtaining food and work out their ways of doing these things, a process that never ends. Culture is a set of simple extensions of various part of the body.
Without culture the astronauts could not have reached the moon nor survived there. The human body needs oxygen and a certain range of temperature to live. However culture devices have enabled human beings to overcome some of the limitations of their bodies and stay alive in harsh environments. Early culture was a means to extend the ability to obtain food, seek protection and raise offspring.
The ancestors of modern human being had an advantage in the struggle for survival because they developed tools and other culture. They became more likely to live and reproduce than creatures that lacked such advantages. As a result the ability to create culture grew from generation to generation.
Every family has a culture and tradition of its own. This tradition includes many traits that the family shares with others who live in the same area with belong to the same social class. In addition, the family has its own set of cultural traits.
All cultures have features that result from basic needs shared by all people. Every culture has methods of obtaining food and shelter. It has an orderly means of distributing the food and other goods to its people. Each culture has systems for assigning power and responsibility, including social ranks and governments. There is also a way to keep order and settle disputes for example, a system of police, courts and prisons. Every culture has ways to protect itself against invaders. It also has family relationships including forms of marriage and systems of kinship.
A culture has religious beliefs and a set of practices to express them. All societies have forms of artistic expression such as carving, painting and music. In addition each culture has some type of scientific knowledge. This knowledge may be folklore about the plants people eat and the animals they hunt or it may be a highly developed science.
Culture differ in their details from one part of the world to other, for example eating is a biological need, but what people eat, when and how they eat and how food is prepared differ from culture to culture.
Environmental differences care related to cultural variations, such factors as climate, land farms, mineral resources and native and animals all influence culture. For example most people in tropical regions wear draped clothing which consists of one or more long pieces of cloth wrapped around the body. People who live in colder parts of the world wear tailored clothing which is cut and sewn to fit the body. Tailored clothing provides more warmth then draped clothing.
People do not realise how greatly culture influences their behaviour until they come across other ways of doing things. Only then can they see that they have been doing things in a cultural way rather than in a national way. For example, many westerners believes it is natural to look directly into a person’s eye while talking. But the people of some Asia/African nations think it is rude to do so.
People feel most comfortable within their own culture and they prefer the company of others who share their culture. When people have to deal with persons of another culture even small differences in behaviour may make them uneasy. The difficulty or uneasiness that people undergo when they leave their own culture and enter another is called shock.
The attitude that a person’s own culture is the best and most natural is called ethnocentrism.