One defining trait of culture is that it identifies us in relation to other people.
We've talked about his before:
a shared culture corresponds with a higher feeling of belonging.
A cultural distance can create a feeling that you don’t belong.
Imagine John, an adventurous traveler from Amsterdam.
John takes a trip to the Amazon to live for a while amongst a tribe there.
This tribe will have a different language, different music, customs, behavior,
a different way of celebrating birthdays, perhaps even some different morals than John is used to.
Even though John has a great time, he feels, because of these differences,
that he is not part of their culture.
When after a few months he lands in Amsterdam
and embraces his friends and family,
he immediately feels at home again and experiences a sense of belonging.
People in the airport are already culturally closer to him than the very friendly,
but culturally different, tribe he has visited.
So culture helps us identify where we belong, with what group we fit in.
But it's not really that simple is it?
Because we are not members of only one culture.
This is another important thing: there are cultures on all kinds of levels.
Within Western Culture for instance we can make many subdivisions
like Western European Culture, Dutch Culture et cetera.
You can even distinguish culture on a very specific group level,
for instance within one group of friends,
co-workers, fans of a popular television series, you can have groups around hobbies,
special interests, moral values, your fashion sense, ethnicity, nationality,
religion, sexual orientation, you name it.
Being in a group means sharing something with the other members.
Being a member of a group therefore has everything to do with your own
personal identity and the group identity.
That's why being part of a group carries emotional weight.
It is this shared element, the shared culture that creates a feeling of belonging.
Let's take another traveler, Maud.
Maud also just returned, not from the Amazon but from a long holiday in Spain.
In Spain, Maud has become a huge fan of Flamenco-dancing.
She had many other Flamenco enthusiasts there to share her passion with,
but back in the Netherlands, her friends and family there don't really know the dance.
Luckily there is the internet,
and Maud soon finds webpages where she can discuss this dance
and share music with people from all over the world.
Maud is now in fact a member of a global cultural group of Flamenco fans,
next to being part of the Dutch culture, the Amsterdam culture,
and many other groups she feels connected with.
Of course, things don't always stay the same.
Maud might lose her interest in Flamenco after a while, leaving the group or making membership
a less important aspect of her identity. Or the dance itself might undergo changes,
splitting up the group in conservatives on one hand
and progressive Flamenco lovers on the other.
All of this is completely natural.
It is in fact another important element of the principle of cultural relativism:
Cultures change all the time.
And many things can cause sudden culture shifts like new technology, population shifts,
resource shortages, new art forms, wars, political decisions and many more factors.
But it’s important to realize that change is also inherent to culture,
so suddenly or gradually change will occur.
You can imagine that all this change and cultural diversity
causes much uncertainty in our lives.
That's why, even if we are not always aware of it,
we are constantly communicating to minimize the discomfort of uncertainty,
to adjust, to keep in touch with cultural reality, with society and the groups we identify with
or want to belong to.
We'll explore this further in our next section.