What is culture？ On the word culture

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The word "culture": its appearance in China can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty. "Culture" is not only a system of civilizing and educating, but also a system of rites and music. This understanding has been maintained in our country until modern times. The meaning of the word "culture" that we use today is obviously different from that of ancient times. It was introduced from the west through Japanese translation at the end of the 19th century. At that time, there was no definition of the word, and people only used the word "culture" according to their own understanding and needs. According to analysis, there were about three meanings at that time; First, it is synonymous with "civilization"; Second, in a broad sense, it includes spiritual and "civilization" contents; Three, narrow sense, refers to the spiritual content. To this day. The meaning of culture is broader; There are also many people who agree that culture refers to "ideology", and everything outside politics and economy is among them; Others make a broader understanding that everything created by human beings (that is, the integration of material civilization and spiritual civilization) is culture; Besides, some people have other explanations.

In view of the fact that scholars at home and abroad have different opinions on the concept of "culture", it has been suggested that the word "culture" may be a vague concept naturally, and it is difficult to make a clear and complete definition. Instead of pursuing a simple and precise definition, people should determine a flexible range from the perspective of set.

Although there are many definitions of culture, I personally think that it should be the same in many aspects, and we can roughly summarize it into the following three aspects;

First, ideology (also known as ideology) means people’s world outlook, way of thinking, religious beliefs, psychological characteristics, values, moral standards, cognitive ability and so on.

Second, the way of life, that is, people’s attitude towards their food, clothing, housing and transportation, marriage, birth, illness, family life and social production activities, and some forms taken in these aspects.

Third, spiritual materialized products, that is, from the formal point of view, are some material things, but through the material form, they can reflect people’s differences and changes in ideas.

From the above three parts, the scope of culture is basically outlined. But we should pay attention to: the word culture; It should be an organic whole, which is not only the simple addition of the contents of these three parts, but also the mutual influence and premise of the contents of these three parts, and should be organically combined according to a specific sequence.