Page 34 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

CULTURE OF THE MIND

meaning has two sides, individual and social. On the psychological side, mean-
ing is to ‘make sense’ of the ideas, experiences, feelings, and images that per-
vade our lives. On the social side, meaning is to be ‘sensible’ about the external
forms we use to make our internal creations public, available to the senses, and
therefore truly social. The idea of ‘making sense’ therefore suggests the ‘sens-
ibility’ of the solitary individual, while the ‘common sense’ of the social side
implies community. Meaning, from the viewpoint of culture, thus refers to the
individualistic and collective coding of experience (Hannerz 1992: 269).
(2) Identity and belonging in human relations. The second assumption involves
a complex double coding of meaning centered on consciousness, a process of
the internal world of the mind. True consciousness ‘makes sense’ only when its
cognitive and emotional elements are verified in the perceptual reality of the
external world. Specific people and concrete objects and places out there are
linked to consciousness in the internal world of the mind. When the internal
experience of consciousness activates the connection to the people and objects
of the outside world by a glimpse, a sound, by touch or pain, by an utterance or
a question, and so on, the internal–external relationship is verified. Reality –
the external object – is linked to internal consciousness. The connection creates
meaning. Such connections are patterned and organized socially. Cultural
meanings are based on human relations and emotionally laced sentiments of
belonging. Belonging then develops in the formation and maintenance of
cultural identities.
(3) Cultural control. An important idea in social science is that culture func-
tions as a control mechanism which governs behavior, and can be compared to
plans, recipes, rules, instructions, and computer programs (Geertz 1973: 44).
Because culture as meaning imposes form and direction on behavior, it can
logically be considered ‘cultural control’.
(4) Cultural survival. The fourth assumption asserts that of all the species
of life, human beings are the most helpless in surviving the harshness of the
natural environment. The biological resources of reflexes, instincts, and genetic
circuits of the brain on their own are simply inadequate to generate the know-
ledge and repertoires of skills needed for survival. The genetic resources of the
cerebral cortex in the brain function more like a generator than a director. An
enormous information gap thus exists between biological endowment, on one
side, and the systems of knowledge and repertoires of skills that are required for
survival, on the other. Basic survival and, to a much greater extent, civilization
require the accumulated knowledge and skills of many generations to fill in the
information gap. Without the advantages of cultural belonging and control, and
without cultural procedures passed on from generation to generation, both the
cultural individual and the cultural community are destined for rapid extinction.
Culture is a strategy for survival, and the human being is the creature which
most desperately depends on ‘such extra genetic, outside-the-skin control
mechanisms’ of culture for ordering his behavior (Geertz 1973: 44). This idea
I call cultural survival.

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