The word "culture" is familiar to everyone, and everyone likes to label something as "culture", ranging from classical culture, modern culture, western culture and Asian culture to chopsticks culture, toilet culture and costume culture in daily life. So what is "culture"?
According to the search results displayed by Baidu Encyclopedia, the meaning of "culture" can be explained from at least three levels. First, from the perspective of western philosophy, culture is the expression of philosophical thoughts. Second, from the perspective of China’s philosophy, "Wen" and "Hua" first appeared together in the Book of Changes, Ben Gua and Bi Zhuan-"Rigid and flexible, astronomical; Civilization stops, so does humanity. It’s about astronomy to observe the changes of time, and it’s about humanities to turn into the world. " In this sentence, there is a clear distinction between "astronomy" and "humanism", in which "astronomy" refers to nature, while "humanism" refers to the spirit related to human life. In China’s traditional discourse system, the meaning of "culture" is mostly derived from it.
Third, on the level of social anthropology, culture in a broad sense is the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social and historical practice; The narrow sense of culture is the explanation put forward by British culturist Taylor in his book Primitive Culture, that is, culture is a complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, morality, law, customs and the abilities and habits acquired by anyone as a member of society.
However, on the whole, I personally think that "culture" is a comprehensive summary of all beings with beautiful characteristics. Because judging from the emergence of "culture" and its relationship with human social life, the greatest influence of "culture" on people lies in letting people know beauty, know beauty and inherit beauty. Throughout ancient and modern China and foreign countries, the existence that can be called "culture" can basically give people beautiful impressions or feelings, such as poetry culture, from which readers can feel the beauty of language and rhythm, while clothing culture can make people feel the beauty of design and human body. At the same time, "beauty" is actually the dominant factor in the integration, guidance, order maintenance and inheritance of "culture". In addition, in a narrow sense, "culture" ultimately leads to "beauty of human nature". Why do we often refer to a person as a "literate person" instead of others? In essence, it is because this person gives others the impression that they understand beauty, kindness and elegance. We often say that we should inherit the traditional culture of China, but what we inherit is the beauty of China tradition. Where is the beauty? Beauty lies in the life of mutual respect, love for life and free choice among people.
Author: Shi Ying
