Culture, to use a computer analogy, is humanity’s operating system. Without it, there would be no language, no communication, no knowledge, and no meaning. And like a computer operating system, culture gets installed with certain “default” settings that, unless overridden, determine how humans view their world and structure their everyday behavior. In the United States, the current default settings install a popular American moral culture that: celebrates personal effort and individual achievement, demonstrates patriotism, believes in God and a spiritual afterlife, values loyalty to family, friends, and co- workers, expects personal moral freedom, distrusts large organizations and bureaucracies, and conveys that happiness is found primarily in personal relationships and individual consumption. Unless these default settings are altered, typically to install more specific religious or nonreligious sub-cultural settings, this constellation of beliefs and practices is characteristic of most Americans.
Tim Clydesdale, Associate Professor of Sociology, College of New Jersey. Excerpted from "Abandoned, Pursued, or Safely Stowed?"
Thoughts?
3 comments:
I think that is one way to describe culture in general. You could say worldview is the CPU, everything must be processed by your worldview, and is then outputted to its destination. I like the analogy.
Interesting idea, Adam, though this shifts the analogy from culture (which is corporate) to worldview (which in your analogy is personal.) Hmmm....
I see what he's getting at. He's trying to understand the framework. I would take exception to the specifics in his default settings based upon age group and demographic, but overall he is on the right track.
To continue the thought... we who have a Biblical worldview, is it necessary to have a Christian subculture (Christian language, Christian insights, Christian meanings)? Sure, the default settings will be different for those who are exclusively Christian subcultured, but can they communicate with the general culture in evangelism?
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