A couple of days back, while walking down a nearby busy street, I noticed a motorist spitting on the road. It so happened that he almost spat on the leg of another lady pedestrian. The lady seemed to be in her mid-twenties, and was formally dressed, maybe on the way to her workplace. Her quick outburst was "...you culture-less idiot"!! Although she escaped from having to clean her dress or leg, that left her in a bad mood, and that I think, would've eventually held on to her psyche for hours during the day. If she had found a stone, I'm sure she would've hurled it at his head!
But what stuck to my mind was the word "culture-less". There can only be a culture, but nothing "less" or "more". I searched through the dictionary and found that culture is defined as follows:
The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society (Courtesy: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/culture)
So, now, with the definition in hand, the lady was definitely wrong; at least grammatically!
Lets take a look at a few examples of using culture:
1. America has a gun culture.
2. Africa has a drug culture.
3. Indians have a culture of raping their women!
4. Accepting bribe is part of our culture.
5. We have a culture of idolising foreign culture
...and so on.
So, its clear that culture differs from place-to-place.
India, especially, is a big nation, and we have a history of a varied culture.
In recent times, we've been hearing a lot about crimes against women and girls, is this the culture that we want to cultivate?
We see videos of couples being beaten by a group of self-proclaimed moral police, is this the culture that we want to pass on to the next generation?
And it really surprises me when people go around beating others in the name of culture, thereby introducing a new culture of intolerance.
We are the present-day ambassadors of an Indian culture, that we very proudly project to people, not realising that we are only being proud at what our ancestors have done. Our present day culture is not something that we can be proud of. We do not carry forward any of the good things of the past, and at the same time, we haven't been able to successfully deal with modern culture.
History gives us enough proof that great empires have fallen due to their over-indulgence in sex, booze and internal violence. While we boast about our "great" culture, we should realise that we are not the followers of that "great" culture, and that a fall is very imminent.
But what stuck to my mind was the word "culture-less". There can only be a culture, but nothing "less" or "more". I searched through the dictionary and found that culture is defined as follows:
The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society (Courtesy: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/culture)
So, now, with the definition in hand, the lady was definitely wrong; at least grammatically!
Lets take a look at a few examples of using culture:
1. America has a gun culture.
2. Africa has a drug culture.
3. Indians have a culture of raping their women!
4. Accepting bribe is part of our culture.
5. We have a culture of idolising foreign culture
...and so on.
So, its clear that culture differs from place-to-place.
India, especially, is a big nation, and we have a history of a varied culture.
In recent times, we've been hearing a lot about crimes against women and girls, is this the culture that we want to cultivate?
We see videos of couples being beaten by a group of self-proclaimed moral police, is this the culture that we want to pass on to the next generation?
And it really surprises me when people go around beating others in the name of culture, thereby introducing a new culture of intolerance.
We are the present-day ambassadors of an Indian culture, that we very proudly project to people, not realising that we are only being proud at what our ancestors have done. Our present day culture is not something that we can be proud of. We do not carry forward any of the good things of the past, and at the same time, we haven't been able to successfully deal with modern culture.
History gives us enough proof that great empires have fallen due to their over-indulgence in sex, booze and internal violence. While we boast about our "great" culture, we should realise that we are not the followers of that "great" culture, and that a fall is very imminent.
