Chapter 9

The Individual in Culture

Introduction:

So far, we have indicated the vast and multiform phenomenon of culture.

- We have presented some of its various characteristics.
- We have also determined the implication of the reciprocal relationship between human
nature and culture.
- Let us now reflect on the human individual in culture : insertion of the individual in a
particular culture, his situation, and his role in that particular culture.
• This reflection is in preparation to the question of the value of culture.
• The answer of such question gives satisfaction to the astonishment being
experienced from the encounter of the phenomenon.

The Individual Inserted in Culture.

Every individual - as a social animal - is born and develops himself in a human grouping.
- In a particular cultural group, the individual then conforms and adopts himself to the
behaviour and the environment of the group.
o This is achieved by her/his capacity to intend and to will,
o S/he understands and affirms such behaviour and such environment, value and
wishes,
o S/he makes choices and behaves intelligently within the scheme of the culture that
s/he receives through tradition.
o Thus, her/his human development is built and at the same time determined by
such culture - Italian or French, Cebuano or Ilongo, B'laan or T'boli.

- To summarize, the activities of the individual in a group are achieved in:

• considering her/his freedom and knowledge s/he possesses,
• the movement from motives to adhesion of values,
• the process from affectivity to judgment.
• These activities of the individual are developed more rapidly because they are
stimulated by the circumscribing culture.
 Such individual becomes participant of the same culture in becoming an
adult.
 His behaviours and his environment become more human because of that
same culture, i.e.:
 the perspective of the systems of concepts,
 The perspective of the systems of convention,
 The perspective of the scale of values,
 The system of symbols and signs,
 The system of perceived configurations, body movements and
adaptability to the objects.
There is a need to remember that the insertion of the individual in a culture does not mean his
knowledge, adhesion, behaviour….of everything gathered in that same culture.
- It is not possible for the individual to absorb everything (all the elements) in that
particular culture.
• The absorption of everything in a culture is not a requirement for the
individual to actualize himself in his life-time.
 Many individuals will not know all the myths considering that in a
culture there is limitation in the number of individuals and the
diversity involved.
• Theoretically, the human being will not know the minute details to the end.
 For instance, a man will never know everything about a woman and vice
versa.
 More so when it comes to the consideration of cultures, since these imply
specialized activity and multiple social roles.
 For example, a priest or a soldier will not know, will not feel, will
not be able to follow … all that which pertains to religion and war.
- But the said insertion of the individual in its culture is not everything.
• Because the human individual conserves radically and even augments his/her
capacity to know, to judge, to choose and to conduct himself/herself beyond
that.

TheRole of the Individual in Culture.

First of all, the role of the individual inserted in a culture is that of behaving himself in
accordance to schemes and models of behaviour and relatively to the environment or world
which both constitute it.
- We also note that the behavior (conventional) influences the whole individual.
- This implies the knowledge already acquired and concretized itself in a particular culture.
However, we remember that any application of an abstracted knowledge to a concrete case
requires a new act of knowing, and often also of choice if it presents more possibility of
execution.
- We think of an engineer who must apply his/her scientific and technical knowledge
needed for the construction of bridges to concrete situation.
- We think of choices of words and metaphor or examples adapted; or choice of material
for arms and of decorations.
- Such behavior (as means-to-end rather than as expressions) contributes to the
maintenance and to the continuity of the culture, because it maintains the cultural
environment.

But the individual inserted in a culture does not only function determined by a scheme, there
he realizes himself as a human being, concretizes it and sustains and transmits it to the future
generations.
- This involves in some measure, consciously or unconsciously, an active role of further
contribution or modification.
- What contribution or modification?
 • First of all, the simple quantitative contribution: work, word, generation of
sons, rites and so forth, if there are no conditions particularly adverse, they
tend to multiply the objects of use and the members of the group, making their
knowledge of the proper culture, extending the modifications of the natural
environment.
• In human things the quantity - expressing ourselves in marxist terms - tend to
pass into quality, as it changes in some measure the situation of the group
undergoing new problems and new possibility immediately and impinging
therefore the qualitative modification of the culture.
 For example, we have the increase of the followers of St. Francis
which requires adaptations to the order itself and to the society of that
epoch.
 Another example is the increase of the population and of the
commerce in the 5th cent. a.d. which poses the problem of the
restructuring of the city-state, or the increase of the population in the
groups of the island of Polynesia, and so forth.

- Finally, the individual inserted in his culture can modify schemes of behavior and
structures of his world with new theoretical understanding, new technical invention,
political solution, religious aspiration, and artistic style.
• We think for example:
 of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton for the scientific vision of the cosmos,
 of Saints Francis and Dominic for the way of religious life,
 of George Stephenson for the transportation, for the medieval introduction
of the staff of the military art,
 of Rousseau for the attitude towards nature for the roots of romanticism,
of impressionism for the picture, and so forth.
• This modifies the existing culture and become accessible to others then accepted
and assimilated by the group.
• And the role of the others is:
 of accepting and assimilating (perhaps widely and more lately) that
agreement or
 also refuting it spontaneously or
 reflectively elaborating the reasons and
 perhaps being problematized.

Even the refutation of an element of the particular culture, contestation, the revolt …these are
possibilities that an inserted individual can do on it.
• Because the individual always transcends it towards something which is not that
one of the participants
• Because of freedom s/he can always "sin", that is falling from that which he
knows as reasonable and good.
- However, we note that such refutation is never total (we think of Lenin or of Mao).
• This is because the human individual cannot, in one act of knowledge, exhaust
everything of the entire culture in which is shaped itself all its past,
 • S/he cannot - not knowing that the thing as is - in one act refuting it.
• The transition from the previous structure to another is never total.
- Purely the refutation exercised a certain influence on the culture of the group,
o shaking the conventions
o generating doubts
o provoking an adhesion more conscious or more urgent to new solution.

Since the human individual, although inserted in a culture, develops a role that is limited, but
also in some measure more or less modestly overcome them.
- Why to a measure modest only, and not total?
• Because it transmit it the proper capacity of operating that are stated modeled
from the culture
• Because also the agreement of a genius is modest in confronting the extra great
number of agreements which have flowed in the same culture.
• Note that the relation between human individual and culture is always dialectical,
of reciprocal formative influence which is the root of originality of history.

The phenomenon of culture: its characteristics, the reciprocal implication with human nature and
the role of the individual in it - in some way indicated, known and determined.
• They put us now in the level of facing the problem of its value.
• This leads us to the next theme on the Value of Culture.