The Essence of Evolutionary Culture

Culture is a Bi-polar Reality (Innately Internal and Innately External)

The bi-polar quality of culture means it possesses both innately internal and innately external aspects, just like the bi-polar quality of beauty does. Since conceiving beauty depends on human psychological and mental characteristics (other living beings are incapable of it), comprehending culture also has an innately internal aspect resulted by “The Principle of Protecting Evolutional Essence.”

As beauty has a virtually external aspect, such as the refreshing appearances of a flower, moonlight, a river fall, or beautiful handwriting, so does culture, like observable examples of morals, works of art, and architectural characteristics representing various external acquisitions and ideals.

The most apparent evidence for the bi-polar quality of culture is the same as that of beauty, which is specifically devoting the capability of comprehending beauty to man. In other words, cultural life is exclusive to human beings. If we consider all of the given definitions for culture, we find that none are applicable to animals.

Human perception and activities are undoubtedly unlimited from an evolutionary point of view. Man's experiences throughout history obviously prove that although no human being can innately achieve the essence of greatness, moving on a path towards the highest virtues is nevertheless a characteristic of mankind which has caused his immense accomplishments and all well- established encyclopaedias around the world approve of. Hence, those activities and phenomena not rising from mental and psychological processes cannot fit in the definition of culture, no matter how appealingly fantastic they may be. Even if interesting issues play a role in preventing life from becoming monotonous and fading the boundary between physical and spiritual affairs, they should nevertheless be excluded from culture -for the sake of the essence of culture itself -let alone when they are harmful, e.g. obscene pictures which demolish moral chastity, or some types of music and drugs. Unfortunately, fallacious paralogism has brought about deviations in the highly virtual meaning of culture, degrading it to a level which ranks humans with lowly animals, like gathering many huge snakes intrigued to bite; as ancient Persian culture states: 

“Scorpions do not sting out of revenge or hate; their nature causes them to do so”

However, some lethally dangerous “human beings” tend to use all of their valuable capabilities and talents consciously for their own selfish pleasures and desires, reasoning that ‘pain is terrible, and losing one's wealth and possessions is truly painful’. This is the natural ego observed in man throughout history. Can brotherhood, equality, reasonable liberty, graciousness, and human dignity be achieved through such natural egos so deeply immersed in conflicting disturbance? By no means, for such a wish would prove only a humiliatingly deceitful hallucination. Therefore, accomplishing high virtues such as unity, logical equality and brotherhood in human societies inevitably requires perfect cultural elements like proper, meritorious morals and the highest qualities, such as justice, dutifulness, sympathy towards peers, accountability towards other fellow citizens and conceiving the exquisite glory of the universe by comprehending its beauty and fine order, all of which guide man along the quickest possible way to the creator of the rules of equality among men. No other path would lead to the pure ideal depicted by Universal Human Rights, man's general culture, morals and human universal nature.

Nowadays, scientists, experts and anyone with the least basic knowledge can merely refer to any well-known encyclopaedia to realize the essence of a culture able to save humanity, which can be defined as:

“The proper quality or deserved methods used for those of man’s physical or spiritual needs based on human logical thoughts and emotions arisen from reasonable evolutionary lifestyles.”

This is a fundamental part of our discussions on culture. In other words, by presenting the definitions of culture in various well-known encyclopaedias all over the world, we prove -at this critical period of time -that the commonalites between them all are properness, perfection, physical and spiritual development, graciousness, dignity, integrity, meritorious life, responsible freedom, and lawful justice.

Now let us analyze the above mentioned definition [1] that we stated as the most comprehensive of all. Doing so, we will come to four main principles vital to achieving the important ends and content of culture.

The Four Principles of Culture

ONE: The concept of culture -as presented in civilized nations -include “proper-ness” and “deservingness” based upon the logical thoughts and emotions arisen from people. Thus, although some phenomena in some societies may be regarded as culture, they cannot even be considered as true cultural phenomena, let alone if they conflict with reasonable thinking, emotions, and literature for they do not contain logical thought or perfect human emotions. This is why no aspect of selfishness (racism, greed for money, power, fame or pleasure) can fit into the concept of culture, for as we quoted from the world's most distinguished encyclopaedias:

“Culture is the proper quality or deserved method of the phenomena in man's life; in other words, culture contains the highest values.”

Thus, those who call greed for fame, money, power, pleasure, selfishness or mutiny culture, have betrayed the highest of human virtues terribly. Calling a person or a society cultureless is the worst insult possible.

TWO: Without culture as we defined it, human life does not deserve to go on, for a life without culture means a life empty of meaning, thought, logic or perfect human emotions.

THREE: The more the culture of a society depends on logical principles and high human receptions, the more meritorious and proper it will be

FOUR: Culture is a two-dimensional reality, consisting of absolute and relative aspects.

Clearly, by “absolute” we do not mean in the philosophical sense, but that it is much more comprehensive than other relative cultural elements. Such a categorization brings us to general and special cultures.

Special cultures, caused by the relative aspect of culture, pertain to certain nations or peoples of specific thoughts or emotions. A few notable examples are the cultures of bullfighting in Spain, or the exaggerated amount of courtesy and bowing in Japan. [2]

General culture pertains to meritorious qualities appropriate to man's physical or spiritual lifestyle, phenomena and activities not limited to any specific nation or race, e.g. cultures like aesthetics, mutual respect among people, justice, knowledge, and creating heroes.

We may conclude from the above statements that, since culture means the proper qualities fit for the physical or spiritual phenomena and activities in man's life, accepting and reflecting the totally natural compulsory facts or effects of human life - such as eating and drinking -cannot be regarded as a part of culture; however, their connection to prayers, which is quite common in Islam and some other religious societies, fits into the domain of culture. Defending one's life, preparing a shelter, or accessing scientific or philosophical facts through the senses can also be considered as a part of culture.

The Connection between the Necessary Cultural Elements and the Merited

It is quite difficult to make a clear distinction between these two types of cultural elements without encountering a conflict, for accusing man of ignoring the gloriously perfect human ideals for providing the necessities of his life, would be denying the most obvious of fact -all reason and conscience.

Defying human glory and man's great ideals, and degrading mankind down to being equivalent to honeybees, means destroying all humanity. Furthermore, isolating cultural concepts from the vital facts of life -like knowledge, science and other mental activities that adjust or life -leads to the separation of perfectionist tendencies from normal life, which in turn causes spiritual dilemma between “natural and evolutionarily spiritual” life.

Early in the 21^st century, we have seen many pioneer societies on the earth making great effort in order to implement the most realistic economic, social, legal or moral ideologies in their communities. Not only did they fail to do so, but they have even -as we have already seen in the definitions of culture in such countries as Russia or China -clearly admitted the necessity of a pioneer spiritual culture regardless of any presumptions of an ideology. Accepting the necessity of culture is not brought about by one or a few conventional factors, but by man's human nature, without man would totally lose his humanity -when “man stepped which out of his prehistoric caves and entered the unfeeling wheels of a machine.”

Hence, ever since man came to being, he had culture beside him to provide his life with delicacy and fulfil his highest spiritual ideals. Man's close connection with culture has given profound cultural value to morals and arts (in a general sense), true knowledge, “taboo morals”, customs and even laws. It is quite a simple, unquestionable fact that without spiritual culture [3] , man would lose his life.

Solzhentisyn [4] has thus elaborated on this matter at the International Congress of Philosophy in Liechtenstein:

"We can generalize the same moral expectations we consider for man to governments, rulers, parliaments and political parties. If politics does not have a moral basis, there will truly be no future for mankind. Russians have been literally witnessing this since centuries ago. I unfortunately see that my countries’ goals have fallen way behind even the West. After seventy years of unbelievable pressure and suffocating dictatorship, there is now abundant freedom among the poor classes, and many people have totally forsaken their conscience; however, we must not let this problem distribute among other countries. As we approach the end of the second millennium, this problem continues to threaten all of mankind.”

Notes:

[1]- That makes it 164 + 1 definitions of culture altogether.

[2] Such inordinate cultures -like other special cultural elements and phenomena -are heading for demise, except for principle-based cultural aspects.

[3] Spiritual culture includes a) high moral virtues, b) art, as an indication of man's deepest emotions concerning “what should be done”, c) freedom -in the sense of having the power of choice, which arises in actively powerful qualities during evolution, and d) religion, addressing questions such as: “Who am I? Where have I come from? Why am I here? Where will I end up?”

[4] Russian writer, who greatly criticized the Soviet Union from a mystical- religious point of view.