The Spectrum of Culture: Technical, Symbolic, and Practical Dimensions
Diverse Forms of Culture
Technical or Instrumental Culture
Humans alter their environment using techniques to produce new objects. The repeatability of these objects is linked to the satisfaction of desires. This form of culture is easily transferable from one individual or group to another.
In a culture of necessity, human actions become more complex through technique, leading to a new class of objects, not just subjects. Personal projects emerge. The techniques employed create an environment that influences other aspects of human life. Through technology, humanity has modified its environment, sometimes losing its origins. While technical nature can cause damage, it does not abolish humanity below a minimum threshold.
Ideal or Symbolic Culture
Objects in ideal culture have a distinct, non-repeatable relationship, and their material presence is often diminished.
Objects form ideal culture; the creator can be substituted by another subject. This process typically involves three stages:
- Establishment: The initial creation of the object.
- Sedimentation: Imbuing meaning into a sensible material.
- Joint Acceptance: The collective adoption and understanding of that meaning.
Reality interprets our nature through the cultural universe; humanity transforms consciousness. Human content is valid for the symbolic animal, which consists of culture. We do not face reality directly, but rather our perception of it. To study culture is to study human nature, the rationality characteristic of human activity. Humanity is intelligent, and imagination is symbolized.
Culture is intrinsically linked to language, especially symbolic culture, because words are unique. A double ideality appears in words: the ideal representation of things and the ideal object itself.
Language provokes classification, structuring our world. How we perceive ourselves and the world is, therefore, language culture. Meaning has complexity: symbols are both variable and universal.
Human signs can evolve and combine to create new meanings, forming culture. What humans do creates a world that defines and overrides the biological symbol.
Symbolism allows humanity to propose language that transcends the physical world and to live with ideals.
Practical Culture
Practical culture involves the regulation of human behavior in the face of social conduct models.
Human beings in society are born into a specific context, forming the basis of practical culture. This culture has two main objectives:
- To protect humans against nature and other humans.
- To regulate relations between individuals.
Practical culture fulfills the first objective by achieving the second.
Cultural practices, by introducing rules, organize human actions and establish a way of being. The loss of human capacity to regulate relationships through established norms leads to cultural diversity.
Culture regulates human actions by providing anticipated knowledge. It allows us to know what others will do, or what we ourselves should do, because it is expected. Culture creates practical courses of action, though compliance depends on human will.
Society regulates the conduct of individuals according to their position. However, in humans, cultural creativity is shaped by a phylogenetic basis.
Courses of action are more important than just professions; these courses affect all aspects of life.
The models society offers professionals respond to ideal archetypes, but not all models are available for everyone.
Society establishes primordial ratings between professions, which are a source of value. While main occupations are practiced within the cultural sector, this also affects the evolutionary character of culture.
Society regulates courses of action that affect people’s lives. Different practical cultural scenarios are nuclei around which concepts like love, life, death, and play are built.