How Culture Shapes Our Minds
By: Tiago Miranda
Tags: Vision, Philosophy Of Mind, Human History, Culture, Neuroscience

How Culture Shapes Our Minds

The Fight Against Preconception

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Do not get me wrong, I agree with multiculturalism in a society full of differences. Though what is undeniable is that culture has and does shape our minds, even without our consent. It is hard to believe how a simple thing like growing into a specific group, with a specific language and a particular way of communicating would eventually reflect who we are in life.

From colours to different shapes, from textures to exquisite patterns; your life is dogged by a simple robotic mode that either involuntarily or by a simple act of love as a child, on behalf of your parents, reflects your way of thinking as an adult — unless you change over time.

Homo Sapiens Could Have Not Survived Without Culture

Culture nonetheless is an important aspect of our history as human beings. From primordial times, culture kept us warm, provided food and shelter and also organised us as a collective to survive as the species that we see today.

“Culture has made the human species a spectacular ecological success”, according to Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, whom wrote “The Origin and Evolution of Cultures”.

Modern times only exacerbate this fact, social media reveals the dark side of an evolutionary aspect of embedded intelligent animals in definite groups that unfortunately most of the time cannot relate to one another.

It is hard to understand why we are still dependent on learned habits sometimes rooted in a specific culture and absent of minor changes. Such a taboo subject that advocates further discussion to make it a plausible point of view as to why people think and act differently.

For the sake of living together and surviving due to geographical proximity, it does make sense to adopt certain traditions. Although if it is by force whilst trying to convert others concerning orthodox beliefs, it has clearly increased conflict around the world, promoting narrow-minded individuals in the end.

To grasp this concept further, can you remember when you were a baby? If not, ask your parents.

You were most probably put in a room and shown specific colours, listened to certain music, watched certain videos, read certain books and sometimes prayed to certain gods.

Your group as a teenager is directly related to what your parents had and continue to have, mostly with thoughts and ideas about the world. Have you ever thought about that for one second?

If so, I am afraid to say that your little bubble is no more than one suburb away, as soon as you leave the community and start exploring the world and investigate new cultures, furthermore sub-cultures. You might be one step ahead of seeing with different eyes what the world has to offer.

Our brain, as flexible as it is, can rewire itself slowly to accommodate the mind in the way you apply your new habit or adapt your old pattern to a specific location.

This is neuroplasticity at its peak. It is undeniably an auto-mode uncontrolled physically by us, which is nothing more than a way to adapt to the environment and thrive as a single organism — you — into a specific community.

Language and customs may be a turning page for adaptation, where cultural shock slips through unnoticed and sometimes makes you anxious of the unexpected. It is up to you to accept it or not.

If you do, it opens a new window of opportunity to debunk the preconceptions before your eyes. Common symptoms of a cultural shock are dreaming in different languages and accepting different protocols.

Or for instance, you may begin to undertake unusual behaviours and possibly stop judging others by appearance or just someone out of date with their clothes. Skin colours do not matter anymore; you have seen different and interacted enough to accept the differences because there was no way around it, unless you isolated yourself or became depressed, or simply ignored the fact that you were far away from the comfort of the parenting circle.

We, as humans, are dependent on social skills to maintain our mental health. Self-isolation can just crash our system and keep us alienated in a single world of denialism and unlimited suffering. See what happens during this pandemic. The rate of depression has grown considerably since it all started in March 2020, but that is when technology can work in our favour.

Your worldly experience can reveal who you are, breaking old taboos that could no longer have made you prosper as a globalised person and allow others to show you different ways of seeing things. As Sigmund Freud would say, not to quote him directly, people could find themselves perceived with one reality that invites other realities to be part of the one.

Now, imagine if everyone, as simple as it gets, could apply the humble ideas provided above. Would that not be of interest?

Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash

A Better Collective Future Ahead?

How will the world look in hundreds of years? Humans have a massive footprint thus other animals are just present and alive. Although our responsibility outreaches expectations for the future to change for the better, our species continue to thrive, even by harming one another. Some past cultures have shown us how to work in symbiosis with nature, but it is too far away from today’s world and for the majority of us living in cities.

If it is to progress for the better in hundreds of years’ time, I guess leaving nature alone would not be a bad idea. Let its natural cycle of life and death continue then. Even though, we can still be part of it as long as we understand how it works and comply with it.

And also, to be convinced that we are just animals like any other. We shall let greed alone disappear into the shadows, transforming this attitude into a new global culture.

Too much to ask I guess? But it is up to us, changing to an open-minded view of the world. Just then we could take the full benefit of sustaining different cultures and adopt a common one to live in peace. Is it really possible?