'If one begins with the multicultural premise that all cultures are equal, then the world as it is makes very little sense,' he says. Some cultures have completely outperformed others in providing the things that all people seek—health, food, housing, security, and the amenities of life.
Thomas Sowell
The context for that Thomas Sowell quote is dicey. I won’t go into it.
But culture is too often framed as an unchanging monolith. When in reality, it is a rapidly evolving and changing organism that absorbs, assimilates from all sources.
And it’s such a broad catch-all term to encapsulate so much starting from our eating habits, how we grow food, how we communicate, how we work, how we organise society, how we govern and pretty much everything under the sun that constitutes living and organising our lives. Individuals, families, neighbourhoods, villages, towns, cities, states, provinces etc.
Suffice to say, we are going to talk, work and live very differently 200 years from now than we do today. And we are entirely different beasts from what we were 100 or even 50 years ago.
My point is the value of our culture will be measured and boil down to this. How effectively can a good chunk of our citizenry be provided a reasonable access to these things : health, food, housing, security, and the amenities of life.
The value of a culture is how it can be used to give us access to a life, education, security, safety and improved quality of life. It’s not something we gatekeep, protect or worship as a monolith or one right path. It’s something we live every single day. Every one of us a little differently from the next person
