Papers > History > Culture as Personality
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Culture as Personality
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Culture is a nebulous concept, difficult, impossible even, to define universally. ... Over the past two weeks, I have read works by several authors, each of which outline, or assume, a definition of culture. None of these have matched exactly or even particularly closely to my own definition of culture. ... Put simply, I define culture as the personality of a people or group of people. ... Personality is expressed in everything a people does, from art to literature to commerce to social structures. Certainly the graphic art of a people is part of their culture, but it is only a part, one facet. ... In short, culture as I define it is the way in which people do things. Before dismissing this as simplistic, consider the previous statement that culture is personality. The personality of a people dictates how they do everything. ... The culture of the United States is based around the concept that every person is equal in status and, more importantly, in opportunity. ...
Reading Matthew Arnold’s essay, Culture and Anarchy, I was struck by how narrow his definition was. He defined culture as ‘sweetness and light’1, or the willingness and the intelligence to pursue ‘perfection’.2 By defining the goals of culture as being religious in nature3,
Arnold causes his definition to become extremely narrow, regarding commerce and religion, among other things, to be mere ‘machinery’.4
At length, upon repeated reading and reflection upon the entirety of the essay, I came to realize what offended me so about Arnold’s definition of culture.
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Paper Information
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Title: Culture as Personality
Words: 1160
Rating: None
Pages: 4.6
submitted by: dazhou
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