Religious Ideology and Culture
The Great Religious/Cultural Blocs
The Shaping of Civilization by Religion
Stages of Religious Development
Conclusions: Religion, Barrier to Globalization?
Appendices
About the Author
Notes
The Guides to Religion and Culture at present include Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. The purpose of this series is to provide education and understanding of the religious traditions in our increasingly linked world.
These volumes are written as an anthropology of religion, and I have attempted to state the beliefs, practices, and histories in words that are consistent with each religious tradition. I have provided historical, social, and cultural information to define the context within which each religion has come into being and developed as a living society today. To the extent possible, I have discussed and reviewed these materials with religious scholars and believers from each tradition although I recognize that there are internal differences in belief and practice within religions, and I have tried to reflect those in a correct manner.
Belief and behavior are at the heart of our self-definition as human individuals and the emotional core of our identity. Our religious and/or ideological identity is so important that
it shapes major life decisions. This series is published recognizing the powerful importance of religious belief and practice among us as humans, respecting and honoring the uniqueness
of the spiritual nature that defines us.
World Religions and their Civilizations
Religious belief and practice have shaped the cultural uniqueness of the world's civilizations. Although secular ideologies and historical events are also important, religion has been an overarching influence over the last four thousand years or more, and world civilizations are permeated by their religious cultures. However today, secularism based on science and capitalism is eroding the religious foundations of the world civilizations. The growth of secularism in recent decades has triggered a reaction from religious fundamentalists in various parts of the world, leading to a resurgence of traditional religious practices that many modernists had thought were moribund. Today, religion is on the front burner, challenging the successes of secularism. The future of civilization itself may be shaped by the results of this confrontation.
Are the world's religions reclaiming their place as the shapers of their civilizations, or are has world history moved beyond religion to a secular scientific future?
Religious Ideology and Culture
Although religious behavior has been the defining characteristic of civilization for more than two millennia, the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution changed that. Secular cosmology replaced metaphysics, challenging the validity of religious experience. This not only challenged the religions but also the ideological foundations of the world's civilizations. Added to the challenges from humanism and science, in the last century nationalism and capitalistic materialism have become the dominant global forces. The old colonial and racist ideologies and power arrangements established over the last 500 years have become unglued. At the end of World War II the last of the European colonial powers (Great Britain, France, Holland, Italy, and Belgium) lost their empires. Spain, Portugal, and Germany had lost theirs earlier. The twentieth century started with much of the world ruled by a few large empires, but it ended with dozens and dozens of new nation-states struggling to make their place in the world. This is the beginning of a new age of world nationalism. In this period of flux many groups struggle for control of the ideological foundations of new nation-states. This is a time to define new operative ideologies, and these ideological conflicts can be seen in Russia, China, Latin America, Africa, and much of the Muslim world. The secular ideology of democratic capitalism has laid down a challenge with which every part of the world has to contend. The conflicts between the capitalistic system and the major world religions have yet to be resolved and sometimes turn
violent.
Religious Culture and Civilization. The world civilizations are divided into religious spheres of influence: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Islam with their various ideologies that have generated distinctive cultures. From society to society religious culture is a kaleidoscope of forms, everything from language and script to dress styles, folk tales, rituals and beliefs, family values, and a myriad other aspects of behavior. Since culture does not necessarily take any specific form, there is no one form of religion across all human societies.
Religion may be monotheistic (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), polytheistic (Hinduism), or non- theistic (Buddhism or Confucianism). The very nature of culture permits the flowering of religious diversity that we see across the world. Religions and the civilizations they have helped forge are important fault lines between the actors in the global society of today. In the major world religions, faith, belief, ritual, religious practice, and values have generated distinctive cultures.1 As humans we all have religious/spiritual practice, ideology and beliefs, family/kinship, cuisine, perception of beauty/esthetics, and authority in the form of politics, but the way each is practiced varies according to whether the society is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Confucian.2
Ethnic and Sectarian Differences. Ethnic identity and religion are frequently intertwined with religious beliefs and practices commonly defining ethnicity. People identify themselves with the behaviors of their religion, and from childhood, this ethno-religious identity is woven intrinsically into our personalities and the cultural fabric of our societies. For some people, it reaches the point that they are their culture and religion. When that happens, life becomes one continuous religious act, and if religion, ethnicity, and politics fuse, the person is capable of sacrificing even their own life in the name of their beliefs.
All religions are divided by ethnic and sectarian differences. European, North American, Latin American, and African Christians are different from each other, not only culturally, but also in religious practice. In today’s global world where communications and cultural influences can spread so quickly, the cultural diversity resulting from ethnic identities and religions creates more opportunities for conflict that have existed in previous time periods. The sharpest conflict that exists for the near future is between the expansion of capitalism, which is not only an economic system but an ideology and way of life, and the religious fundamentalists of the world.
Capitalism is a secular ideology focusing on material well-being, and ultimately it challenges the core values of religion.
Throughout the five millennia of institutionalized religious life, a balance has been maintained between religious conservatives (or fundamentalists) and liberals (those in favor of change). At times urban life has moved into new areas of material indulgence, which has led to fundamentalist rebellions that have overthrown the existing order and corrected the perceived religious corruption. Examples range from King Solomon and the break up of the Kingdom of Israel to the Almohade invasion of Muslim Spain. These fundamentalist coups commonly have
a purifying religious zeal leading to their eliminating perceived social decadence. However, as decadence is eliminated, it may take with it the cultural plurality that is central to civilization itself, which happened in Spain with the expulsion of the Jews. Fundamentalist led corrections to the balance between traditional religion and new values commonly have a moral aspect, and they are intended to conserve what are perceived to be the core values of the religion and society itself. The irony is that the religious fundamentalist groups that aggressively take over their civilizations usually adopt the new lifestyle over time and lose their own conservatism.
In recent decades the most dramatic reaction to the cultural globalism has been the rise internationally of religious fundamentalist movements that are occurring in Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity. These movements emphasize the necessity of protecting traditional religious and cultural values. Differences in values are among the most intractable problems between societies, and in some cases people turn to violence as a way of confronting these problems. Although we find it more difficult to understand each other when we talk in terms of religious beliefs, people from across the world frequently speak the same language of buying and selling. The common interests in technology and entertainment may even provide a bridge over the bristling barriers of religious differences.
Christianity, Western Civilization, and World Order. Although Western capitalism was originally self-identified with Christianity, but in recent decades it has increasingly been identified as a secular socio-economic system. In the religiously pluralistic societies of China, India, and Southeast Asia, this incongruous linkage of capitalism with both Christianity and secularism is not so much of a problem, and those countries have embraced capitalism. In contrast, the first article of faith in Islam is the exclusivity of the religion, and many Muslims see the spread of Western style capitalism as a direct threat to their faith whether its linkage be with Christianity or secularism. As a result, Muslims see capitalism as a two-edged threat, its historical association with Christianity and its present day secularism.
In Asia and the Middle East, Western influence is being challenged on two fronts today, one ideological and the other economic, the sharpest conflict being between Western economic and cultural expansionism and Islamist fundamentalists. The Islamist ideological challenge to Western capitalism comes primarily from the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia and the Shi’ites of Iran, who emphasize the importance of religious law (shar’ia) and living lives based on religion.
Capitalism puts materialism and economics in a superior position to religion, and that challenges the fundamentalist concept of an Islamist life. Islamist fundamentalism has spread widely across the Middle East, and the opposition to Western values has become more confrontational in recent decades. It even leads us to question whether a new “Iron Curtain” is descending between the Muslim world and the West, a clash of civilizations over the fundamental values around which life is to be organized.
On the other hand, the Confucian cultures of East Asia are challenging the West for the control of world capitalism itself. This two-pronged confrontation is occurring at a time when
Western capitalism is at its mature stage and maintaining itself through the importation of large numbers of laborers from other parts of the world which is simultaneously transforming the host countries themselves. While the Western economies are aging, East Asian capitalism seems to have more prospects for growth. The complex of capitalistic values (individualism, accumulation of wealth, materialism, secular humanism, and democracy) directly challenges the way of life of many agricultural societies that depend on family patriarchal gender roles and traditional religious practice. This counterpoint between the wealthier urban industrial and post- industrial societies and the poverty of rural agricultural societies is re-enforced by religious and cultural conflicts. Capitalism is an efficient means of creating wealth, but it also creates poverty, and it is this inequity that may ultimately be its Achilles heel.
The Great Religious/Cultural Blocs
Civilization is like a jewel that beguiles us with its beauty while it bedevils us with its complexity. We stand in awe before cathedrals, pyramids, and temples built by other civilizations; the mystical truths of religion promise understanding of our spirituality; we marvel at the economic and technological miracles that create wealth for us; we admire the luxury goods in silk, gold, and other precious materials that result from unique esthetic visions; our minds are titillated by the arts of music, theater, literature, painting, and sculpture; scholarship explains our societies, nature, and the cosmos; and doctors and medical researchers to find the alchemy of health and longevity. These are the jewels of civilization, but at the same time civilization has a Faustian side because it is a Devil's Bargain. Along with the good comes religious intolerance, institutionalized warfare, exploitation of labor, dictatorship, human rights abuses, impersonal social systems, and abuse of the environment.3 Even with its faults, once we have tasted the fruits of civilization, it is difficult to go back to the life of the village farmer or the tribal hunter.
The canvas of religious complexity in the world is so vast that only the broadest strokes can be drawn in this analysis of the world’s religions. Each of these religious civilizations has had a distinct history that has shaped its contemporary culture. Each has been an experiment, and the differences range from participatory religions to hierarchical ones, from societies with a spiritual focus to secular ones, from religions based on sharing to those based on control. The experience of capitalism and contact with the West has been different in every world region, and those differences explain many of the current events as nations struggle with nations to carve out their places in the world.
The Judeo-Christian West. Judaism is the original monotheistic religion. Although Christianity developed out of Judaism, it changed as it acculturated to Greco-Roman religious beliefs. Christendom has not always lived peacefully with its Jewish compatriots, but Jewish and Christian people built the civilization of Europe with its philosophy, science, sense of community, and commerce. Jewish and Christian scholars built on the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman traditions of law, religion, and governance to construct a society in which humanism,
democracy, and capitalism have flourished. The Christian West also became expansionist and that has defined its relationships with other world religions.
The Muslim World. Islam is a great monotheistic religion, and it is grounded in the exclusivity of its beliefs. It teaches the brotherhood of humanity, and it is the only religion that has had equal success in finding followers in Africa and Asia. Islam starts from the same Abrahamic origin as the other two great monotheistic religions, and all three worship the same deity. The traditions of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus are adopted and refined through the new message that God gave to Muhammad. This message is recorded in the Quran.
Finding the middle ground of peaceful co-existence between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity has frequently eluded these religious traditions, even though all teach tolerance toward the other. Since these cultural and religious blocs border each other geographically, they have been antagonists for the last 1,300 years. In the early centuries, Muslims had the initiative and occupied significant areas of Europe, starting with the invasion of Spain in 711 C.E. which led to almost eight hundred years of Muslim presence in that country. When the Muslims were on the retreat in Spain, the Ottoman Turks were expanding into Europe, taking Constantinople in 1453 and going on to occupy Eastern Europe for the next four hundred years.
Partly in reaction to aggressive Islam, the Christian Church turned to militancy in the eleventh century, and Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to drive the Muslims out of the Holy Land in 1095. That led to the Crusaders' invasion of the Middle East, and although they were driven out in a few decades, it launched the Christians against the Muslims in their homeland. The power of the Ottoman Empire kept the Christians on the defensive for centuries, but when it began to decline in the nineteenth century, the Western powers returned to occupy much of the Middle East during the period of European colonialism. Today the Muslim world is politically independent, but most Muslim countries do not have economic dignity. Some groups within the Muslim world also feel that their religious integrity is compromised by the overarching presence of Western culture.
South Asia. South Asia is dominated by Muslims and Hindus. Islam arrived to India in the eighth century and went on to establish a powerful empire that controlled India for several centuries. Islam was defeated in India by the expansion of the British during the colonial period, and the British in turn established hegemony over that part of the world. India has been the fulcrum of conflict between Muslim, Christian, and Asian cultural traditions. The independence of India in 1947 coincided with the withdrawal of the British, but the conflict between Muslims and Hindus erupted into a violent standoff that is still playing itself out. The open, participatory nature of Hinduism has produced a culture conducive to democracy, and India has become an outstanding example of democracy in the non-Western world. However, its economic growth has been slower than in some other emerging nations, and the low status of women and their lack of literacy is a drag on development.
In India, civilization has drawn its energy from metaphysics and the complex ideological
and religious understanding of the world. Urbanism and trade were important, but the state has played a secondary role for much of Indian history. Contemporary culture in India and the other countries of South Asia is a multi-layered synthesis of Hindu, Muslim, and European elements, and these multiple influences have also spread across South Asia. Indian civilization starts with the Dravidians in the Indus Valley, and it experienced major cultural shifts on various occasions, including the Indo-European invasion, the classic Hindu period, the Muslim empire period, the British colonial period, and the independent republic of today. The three major religions of India, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, were taken by traders and missionaries to Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam among other countries. The openness of Indian society lends itself to the practice of democracy and capitalism.
East Asia. In China, religious culture is based on the organizing dominance of the state, and institutionalized religion has been a secondary factor. The word "civilization" in the Chinese language comes from the same root word for writing, wen, so literacy is at the core of civilization in the Chinese concept. Chinese culture has been the primary motor behind the development of civilization in East Asia. It has extended its sphere of civilization influence to Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and it has physically incorporated Manchuria, Tibet, and part of central Asia into the Chinese state. Although Chinese culture is defined by Confucianism, it also includes important Daoist and Legalist elements. China developed with a certain degree of isolation throughout its history, and its development is the most homogeneous of the major civilizations. However, outside influences have also had significant impact on Chinese culture, ranging from Buddhism that came from India to communism and capitalism, both European economic philosophies. Consistent with Confucian cultural values, capitalism in China has been widely adopted since it became state policy.
China, Japan, and Korea are competing successfully in international capitalism and may take the leadership of the global economy. Although Japan challenged the United States for the military control of the Pacific in World War II, in general the Asian nations have emphasized economic growth over political or military expansionism. These Asian nations are confronting the West through capitalism. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean economic bloc will grow to outweigh that of the United States and Europe over the next few decades. As the shift occurs in world commerce from the control of Western to Asian corporations and consumers, there will be strains and confrontations. Although this conflict will be primarily economic, it will have cultural implications. What will Christendom and Islam be able to learn from the nations that work with Confucian and Buddhist values?
Americas. The Americas were the first proving ground for the expansionism of Western Christendom. Europeans established a new society and religion by force over the indigenous peoples, and that conquest built inequality into those societies. The religious cultures of Latin America are a mixture of Indian, African, Spanish, and Portuguese elements fused into unique
combinations that vary from region to region. These countries have long been dominated by the colonial social and political structures in which people of European descent control those of Indian and African descent. The indigenous cultural influence is strongest in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, and African influence is strongest in Brazil and the Caribbean. After the arrival of the Spanish, the Americas were transformed by the contact with European Christendom and gradually adopted Spanish colonial institutions to create the unique mestizo civilization that is Latin America today.
The cultural history, religious ideology, and ethnic mosaic of a society are the primary components shaping the culture and value system. These cultural factors are woven into a sometimes seamless experience of the world, but they do not exist in isolation. They are linked with the environment, economics, and politics as other factors that shape experience. The following chapters will discuss the cultural portrait of each of these major civilizations.
Accurate knowledge of world religions and cultures is increasingly important in this interconnected world.
The Shaping of Civilization by Religion
Although each of the world religions takes on a different cultural shape, certain aspects of behavior have characterized that process wherever it is found. The following characteristics are common for institutionalized religion, but no one set is definitive for all civilizations in the world.4
Civilizations are centered around religious institutions. Urban, civil life is commonly organized around a temple, an institutionalized priesthood, and a sacred literature, which are the defining elements of civilization itself.
Religious and secular ideology. The building of a civilization requires a common religious and/or secular ideology which is the core of the shared cultural values that organize people’s behavior.
Professional art and architecture. Creativity is used to express the metaphysical and power relationships of civilization through art and architecture. Temples and other monumental buildings are characteristic of civilizations, and their style and purpose define the cultural goals of a society.
Permanent institutions. Religious, political, military, and economic institutions satisfy the organizational needs of nation states. Ritual and belief is institutionalized into formal religious organizations.
Social will and continuity. The commitment to common religious goals is a long term proposition, and it depends on the will of the people to construct the cultural life, institutions, and buildings that define a religion. The “cultural glue” that historically has defined the commitment and will in societies has been religious.
Literacy and Literature. Writing is used to record the religious understanding of the
world, statement of values, laws, history, and narrative traditions. The religious writings provide the common visions and values that bond disparate peoples into an integrated society.
Social well-being. The intersection between religion and civilization is critical because religions give the ideology for the state of well-being in life. It can explain both wealth and poverty and determine how much attention we give to it.
Organized religion appears in each region of the world when civilization emerges, and the shape of each civilization is structured by the religion to which it belongs. We have come to know civilization as a lifestyle based on the material well-being, economic complexity, and cultural sophistication that is commonly associated with city life, but religion has an important role in shaping each. The cultural possibilities of the great religious civilizations unleash human creativity and energy and transform the physical environment and the way people live.
Stages of Religious Development
As religion develops in civilization, its stages are recorded in literature starting with origin stories, then political and clan narratives, and finally religious/philosophical literature. Poetry also develops early in this process, but the novel and empirically based literatures occur later. For two thousand years, the world's civilizations have been organized around religious and philosophical thought, but for the last two centuries scientific thought has challenged that. These kinds of literature represent the corresponding stages of life experience and thought.
Origins Literature. The earliest literature in most groups is the religious, cosmological literature of origins, based on oral traditions. This literature narrates the supernatural events or the hero events that occurred in the beginning of time. This is the covenant literature for the religious tradition and civilization.
The oldest examples of origins literature come from the Middle East, specifically from the Sumerian/Akkadian period. The Sumerian story of Gilgamesh is an example of the human hero, a giant of a man, who shaped his world. Primal hero stories that are "mythological" in anthropological terms. In contrast to the popular usage in English of myth as a statement of untruth, anthropological studies show that "mythological" accounts actually reflect the most fundamental truths and beliefs of a group. Mythological statements actually are the faith underpinnings of cosmic truth for that group. The origins stories explain the basic guidelines of who we are, why we behave the way we do, and how the world got its shape. According to the Sumerians, Gilgamesh built the walls of Uruk, giving the city its shape. Comparable stories of human heroes who shaped the world in its beginning include Pan Ku in China who carved out the rivers, valleys, and mountains and the hero twins of the Maya who defeated evil and created the sun and moon. Pan Ku succeeded because of his tireless work, but the Mayan hero twins succeeded because of their astuteness and magical powers. Each of these stories reflect the way the people of that society view life and think that it should be lived.
In the Hebrew tradition, the oldest literature re-affirms the belief in the supernatural
origin of the universe and describes the role of a single, powerful God in creating people and the world. Few other traditions have such a clear statement of the supernatural creation of the cosmos. In many of the origins traditions, it is simply assumed that the earth is, and the stories begin with the first heroes who shape the world as we know it. The Genesis accounts of creation of the world affirmed the Hebrew belief in the Godly nature of the world and of existence itself, just as the Chinese example re-affirms tireless work and the Mayan example assumes astuteness and magic. In India, this type of literature was lost with the Indus civilization because its written language has never been deciphered. The earliest surviving Indian literature comes from the Indo-European invaders who were illiterate and passed on their stories as oral traditions. Their earliest stories are narrations of their conquest of India, hero stories of military conquest, rather than accounts of the cosmic origins.
Kingly Literature. As kingship is established, new kinds of literature emerge, especially kingly narrative literature, wisdom literature, and poetry. Kingly narrative literature frequently includes dynastic histories with lists of kings to validate the right of the present king to hold the throne. Although these narratives are frequently as much propaganda as fact, it does mark the first attempts to record what later would become history. This literature is usually recorded by scribes working for the king, and it also records military victories and the heroic struggles of the people to dominate the land they control. These long genealogical records are important validation for the inheritance of a king. Genealogies, king lists, and exploits of the kings are found from the time of the Sumerians and Akkadians in Iraq, in Egypt, in the Bible (I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, and I and II Chronicles), in India in the Rig Veda, and in Mesoamerica in the Popul Vuh among others.
Kings frequently established scribal institutes to record not only their own stories but also the cultural history of the group including the oral traditions of origins. The "wisdom literature" of the society was recorded also by some kings. For example, Solomon's scribes recorded wise sayings (Proverbs), the wisdom of loyalty to God in the face of adversity (Job), and the finding of wisdom in all human activity (Ecclesiastes). The beauty of poetry is also frequently associated with court life and recorded in kingly literature (Psalms and Song of Solomon).
Systematic Philosophical and Religious Literature. Two millennia after the emergence of urban civilization and kingship, systematic philosophical and religious literature appears gradually across the civilized world, first in the Middle East with the Hebrew prophets (800-700 B.C.E.), then the Brahmanas in India (700-600 B.C.E.), Buddhism in India (500 B.C.E.), Confucianism and Daoism in China (500 B.C.E.), and the social philosophers in Greece (450- 300 B.C.E.). The specialization of labor in civilization gave some people the opportunity to become authorities in knowledge and thought, leading to codified thought systems. Thinkers organized correct behavior into etiquette and secular morality in China (Confucius) and religious behavior in the Middle East (Hebrew prophets) and India (Hinduism and Buddhism).
The prophets in Israel (from Jeremiah and Ezekiel to Nehemiah and Ezra) transformed
the tribal covenant with Yahweh into a revised set of teachings that recognized invasion and diaspora as the "realpolitik" of life, and they called for religious commitment as the way to solve life’s ills. In India, Siddhartha Gautama saw the evil and injustice in the world and visualized a spiritual way to escape that evil and let ones' spirit flower through meditation and spiritual balance that would lead to Buddhahood. In China Confucius saw the disorder and hardship unleashed by civilization on the people, and he visualized a rational world ordered by ritual, filial piety, and virtues that people could learn. Lao Tzu was less convinced by the rationalism of Confucius and taught people to establish a spiritual contact with the cosmic forces in nature and to draw from nature the knowledge of the correct path (dao) for their behavior. Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle made philosophical statements about life and the universe in Greece, setting the stage for Western thought. Each sought a way to deal with the ills brought by civilization.
These systematic thinkers also attempted to explain why we behave the way we do, rather than relying solely on the mythological explanations of the origins narratives. The history of civilization was well known by this time, and people were aware of the abuses made possible by this new style of life. The Israelites suffered invasion and exile, and the Chinese had suffered devastating civil wars. In view of this cruelty of humans to other humans these early thinkers attempted explanations of the social system, the nature of humans, and the role of God. In each world area the thinkers proposed systems of morality and ethics, telling humans how to life correctly. It was apparent that when humans congregated in large groups their suffering increased enormously. The Middle Eastern writers and thinkers who sought explanation for this situation found it in monotheism, the Indians in metaphysical nature of existence, and the Chinese in secular morality. The differences between these thinkers created religious/ideological differences from one part of the world to another that still characterize us today. The literature and thought of a civilization record the voices of the people, their joys, values, beliefs, concerns, and angst. Understanding the religious thought of a people gives us the opportunity to bridge the value and behavioral gaps between us.
Conclusions: Religion, Barrier to Globalization?
While economics and technology build bridges across the geographic distances, differences in religion and culture create chasms of misunderstanding. In recent decades, conflict has frequently defined the boundaries of religious groups. Religious groups sometimes take on a tribal character in their identification of themselves. Some isolate themselves from contemporary influences, refusing the use of material goods (electricity or cars) or refusing to accept scientific information in the attempt to re-establish a traditional way of life and values.
Although Western cultural and religious influence is a global force today, nations from the other traditions of civilization are growing stronger and claiming their places. With the fall of European colonialism after World War II, the world has been reorganized, and the Muslim and Asian countries are defining national identities based on their cultural heritages and religious
ideologies. As we move into a world that is increasingly dominated by regional religious, political, and economic interests, many questions arise. What are the religious cultures and ethnic mosaics of peoples that make up the major civilizations of the world? What are their religious and ideological roots? How has history created their particular places in the world, and how has it shaped their current expectations? Why do people from other civilizations and religious traditions behave and belief so differently?
Ron Duncan Hart, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist from Indiana University with postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford. He is the Director of the Institute for Tolerance Studies and a former University Vice-President. Hart has written books on Crypto-Jews, Jews and the Arab World, and Sephardic Jews. He has spoken widely as an invited lecturer on Jewish life and culture at universities and other venues. He is a former President of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.
Culture is the form of social life that we develop to speak, eat, dress, marry, grow food, and in general carry on our everyday lives. It is the mechanism that we use to cultivate our innate abilities for speech, thought, manual work, social organization, and other human behavior. As population densities grow, the cultural possibilities for developing human capabilities expand exponentially. The resulting cultural synergy produced by life in cities creates civilization.
Smith, Huston. 1991. The World’s Religions. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Pages 5-8.
Wood, Michael. 1992. Legacy: The Search for Ancient Civilizations. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Page 28.
Each of the world’s regions adopted these factors in a different configuration, which gives each of them a cultural distinctiveness. Cities have been more important in Iraq, monumental architecture more important in Egypt, metaphysics in India, the state in China, and the arts in the Americas. Civilization means different things to different people, and it becomes apparent in their cultural history.
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