When most people think of culture, they think of the culture of a particular country or ethnicity. They may think of some particular subcultures. Culture isn’t limited to that of an easily defineable set of people. Culture is merely the shared behavior, thoughts, and modes of interaction between a particular set of people. As soon as you have two people together, they can start to create their own culture.

Groups of friends have their own cultures, so do workplaces, families and villages. Sometimes the culture in one subway station is different from the culture in the rest of the city. Sometimes an Apartment building has a different culture from the one next door.

When you have your own culture (and most of us do), you sometoems forget that others don’t share it. I remember when I spent a few days hanging out with a friend of a friend. “You don’t play video games? What do you do!?” He couldn’t fathom what I could possibly do with friends besides watching tv and playing video games. We are all guilty of forgetting that’s others (even those who look like us and come from the same places and have similar habits) may not have the same culture.

When I’m with my tribe for extended periods of time, I forget as well. We typically do not feel the need to be overly polite and showing off is frowned upon. A genuine desire to help others is encouraged, vegetarian is the norm but no one pressures anyone to stop eating meat as long as they not rub their love of meat in others faces. Sex and gossip are not really things that everyone feels comfortable talking about, no one buys much, we all have a desire to help the underdog. We don’t like hierarchy.

None of us use the framing of the business and marketing worlds. Many of us are non-judgemental towards those who do, but anyone who tries to engage with us using this language will receive blank stares. It kind of feels like if someone walked up to a bunch of Amish people and used hip hop slang with them....

I’m not defined by my tribe and I have shared culture with other people besides one tribe but this culture plays an important part in how I interact with others. I did choose them and so in many ways, they fit me well, though not perfectly. I typically avoid situations where there is a shared culture that is vastly different from my own, although I’m happy to interact with individuals from those cultures on a one-on-one basis, or in a mixed group.

There is a dominant culture though, a pop-culture, and people who fit into it often feel that others need to adjust themselves to fit the norm. Pop culture includes most of whatsoever on television and media, corporate culture and the typical political paradigms, academia and the like.

I would like to allow those who come from the dominant culture, or any popular subcultures to do what they do. It can be hard though, when they often expect me people like me to fit into their world, rather than accepting us for who we are.

What kind of culture are you a part of?

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