It Takes A Village to Raise A Culture

Ok, so before beginning, watch the video above. ^^^

Did you watch it?

Did you really watch it? It really doesn't take that long...

So at this point, I'm going to assume that you watched the video. Or maybe the video didn't work for you, OR your in a place where you're not supposed to be on your phone/watching videos. (If the last one is the case, thanks for reading it anyway!)

Maybe you just don't want to watch the short video assuming that I'm going to explain about the video anyway. BUT… no, your right. I’m going to explain it anyway. But it really is a cool video.

Anyway, culture. Culture is the customary beliefs, social forms (also known as structures of families), and material traits. In other words, culture is how people and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society.  Relating the video to culture seems pretty far-fetched, let alone relate it to culture and the family. But trust me, it works out. You know the phrase, ‘It takes a village to raise a child?’ Well, I say it takes a village to raise a culture. You’ll see what I mean later.

In the video, it shows how if you continually do or are surrounded by something, you are more likely to do it. The girl in the video was surrounded by people who, when they heard the beep, stood up and sat down. After only a few times of this, the girl started to do it too. Even when everyone else was gone, she continued to do this. Then when other people, (who didn’t know what was going on) saw her do it, they did it too. No one told them to do it, but they did it anyway.

Why?

The point of this experiment/video was to show social conformity or in other words peer pressure. If you think back on your own life, you can probably see times where you did something similar. Getting up for a standing ovation because everyone else was, for example. But what does this have to do with culture and families?

Imagine your own family. (Animals can be included). Imagine your own culture. Did you know that our family puts as much into culture, just as much as culture is put into your family? It really takes a village to shape a culture. What I mean is that culture helps to shape your family, but your family really helps to shape the culture as well.

Like the video, if you are surrounded by people doing something, in the video’s case; standing up when there is a beep, you are very likely to do it too. It’s the same with our families and culture. If you move to a new place, chances are that the culture is going to be different.

[Story time!]

Say you are here living in the United States. Everything is going pretty great for you and your family. One day, walking home from work, you see a billboard that says, ‘Looking for families to participate in an exchange program to another planet! Fabulous new opportunities!’ So that sounds pretty sweet, so you talk it over with your family and they agree. You guys are going to a new planet! So you pack and fly up in the rocketship the exchange program has provided for you. After a long and tiresome journey, you finally reach the new planet of… need a name here… Iowa! (Let’s just go with it.)

You get off your rocketship and take a look around. Everything looks pretty much the same as it did back on Earth. So you move into your new house and hear a knock at the door. That must be your new neighbors! You open the door and, wham! Suddenly you find yourself soaked with grape juice! Shocked and confused you look up to find your new neighbor, conveniently wearing a rain poncho, holding a super mega water gun filled with juice. And he looks...happy? They smile really big and shout, “Howdy, neighbor! Welcome to the neighborhood! Happy day of the Grape Juice!” Then he sprays you one more time with the sticky juice and runs off to join the mass of poncho-wearing people who are spraying juice at each other.

That was weird, but throughout the day, you start to notice other strange things. Everyone shouts as loud as they can when talking in any situation. When they great one another, they do so with jazz hands. Weirdest of all, they seem to really value grape juice. You wonder how you got into such a situation! But to make the best out of the situation, you decide to research a little bit of their culture. After an hour searching, you start to understand their culture a little bit more. Shouting at someone shows their respect to that individual. Greeting someone with jazz hands is like your way of shaking someone’s hand back home. Their value to grape juice is practically the same way you value money. Odd enough of a culture, but what would they say about your own culture?

After a year, it’s time for you to go back to Earth. You and your family have changed since coming here. When your neighbors come to see you off, you jazz hands at them and shout as loud as you can ‘GOODBYE!” They do the same but add in a handshake because as much as their culture has influenced your family, you’ve influenced their culture a little too. You walk on board the rocket ship, heading back to Earth.

So that was a long, complex story, but it’s truly not that different from what really happens when you move to a new state or country. (Disclaimer: People in Iowa will not spray grape juice at you (on purpose), or do jazz hands to greet you. It’s really not apart of their culture. Love you my Iowa people!) The culture changes no matter where you go. In France, the French kiss each other on the cheek in greeting. If you go to New York, people are generally louder than what you’re probably used to. In the United States when you go to a different state, chances are they have an accent and talk differently than what you are used to. But that the culture. When you move somewhere new where the culture is different than what you're used to, it will change your family because your family will start adopting some of those aspects of the culture. It might be the food. Maybe it’s the dress. Most of the time you’ll even start to sound and talk more like that culture. We don’t necessarily bring in the entire culture into our families, but we do bring pieces of them back home with us, which makes families that much more special.

If we go back to the definition of culture, we can see that culture is how people and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like what a family does.

Growing up in a small town, I constantly hear the phrase, “Oh, you’re Loraines, granddaughter!” from people my grandma knows. Almost everyone one in my town knew my grandma because she practically babysat the whole town. One might also hear, “You’re a Beck!” if you have a big family, and your last name just so happens to be Beck. (Hey Sister Beck/ Beck family!) But you can probably see what I talking about. Our families are how we can define ourselves. Sometimes good or bad depending on the situation.

We all have values, and much of the time we share similar values to each other. Honesty, loyalty, respect, pizza, we share these values one way or another. (Ok maybe not pizza, but personally I value pizza.) But where did we learn these values? From our families! They are the ones who teach us right from wrong and instill their own values in us. As we grow we continually add to our values as we learn. And what do you do when you learn something? You share it!

One day in my high school chemistry class, my teacher showed us this video about people telling other students about Dihydrogen monoxide and how it is the number one cause of drowning and other stuff. Then they asked them if we should ban this dangerous chemical. We were all like, ‘yeah we should!’ and most of the people thought so too. But then our teacher told us what Dihydrogen monoxide was… It’s just water. H2O… Yeah, we all felt pretty silly, BUT when we learned about what it was, we went all around school basically doing the same thing the people on the video did, trying to trick people.

No matter what it is we learn, we like to share it with people. Especially little kids. You ask them how their day went and BAM three hours go by and they’re still talking about what they did that morning. When we teach our kids, and consequently our families, the values we have, we then put those out into our society and culture. We don’t always say it out loud, but our actions speak louder than our words.

I don’t know about you, but I like to think I contribute to society. You know, with my amazing personality and sense of humor, I contribute a lot. Ok, so maybe not that much… But we all contribute to society and consequently to our culture. Many of the adults have jobs of some type or another that help to contribute to society. Whether it’s a farmer or doctor or teacher or parent/mother, we all have jobs to contribute to society. I believe that the most important job is that of a mother and father. They are the one who brings a child into the world and then raises it to become a functioning member of society. It is in the family where we are first raised before heading off into the world, and it is there in the family where we start to learn how we contribute to society. We learn to walk, talk, sit, play, do choirs and homework all while in the family. It is in the family where we truly being to contribute to the rest of society.

The family is how culture is shaped and made. Again, culture is how people and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society. I know there isn’t a true definition of family, but honestly, this comes pretty close. We can be defined by our family and we learn about values and about contributions while in our family.

Without families, we really don’t have a culture because our families are what create the culture in the first place. But because culture is made up of many families, which are all unique, we can add things from the culture into our own families as we choose. It’s a big give and take. That being said, we need strong families so we can have a strong culture. If one gets weak, the other will too. So let us build up our families strong, full of values and knowledge so we can contribute to a strong culture.

It truly takes a village to form a solid family and culture that we can be proud of.