Culture becomes more ingrained as we grow older
I agree with the thought that culture becomes more ingrained as we grow older. This is why I don’t just want to travel, but as some point I want to live somewhere other than Alaska and I want any kids I may have to be shaped by a variety of cultures. I would really like to be a world citizen.
via: Rolf Potts
“We all go through a similar process of being formed by the culture around us. It is something described well in Bruce Wexler’s book Brain and Culture: Neuroscience, Ideology and Social Change, in which Wexler argues that much of human conflict arises from our efforts to reconcile the world as we believe it to exist (our internal structures) with the world we live in. According to Wexler, we develop an inner world, a neuropsychological framework of values, cause and effect, expectations, and a general understanding of how things work. This inner world, which underpins our culture, forms through early adulthood, after which we strive to ensure it exists, or continues to exist, in the world outside. Those inner structures can change in adulthood, but it is more difficult given our decreased brain plasticity. That different internal structures exert different pressures on the mind (and body) should not be surprising. Every culture has its own logic, its own beliefs, its own stresses. Once one buys into its assumptions, one becomes a prisoner to the logic. For some people, that means a march toward its more tragic conclusions.”
–Frank Bures, “A mind dismembered: In search of the magical penis thieves,” Harper’s, June 2008
