/lit/ - Literature

>>16292771
Carrying the argument further, conflict is the source and substance of culture. Imagine all of material existence being divided into the categories of ‘nature’ and ‘culture.’ Nature encompasses all things that would exist without an agent attaching meaning to them: the earth, the animals and the plants. It is in their nature to carry on existing without the design or permission of another agent in one form or another. Culture, conversely, exists derivatively; from the will of self-conscious beings. Tool-use in chimpanzees may fit this description, but we cannot be sure if chimpanzees know that they will die. We know we will die. Every artifact of our culture without exception is a product of the conflict of the terminal, self-conscious mind against its nature to return to nothing—to die.

Our sexuality is not cultural, but the mores, prohibitions, sublimations and elaborate expressions of it are cultural.

Culture means to cultivate; to make something appear by our own will, that would not exist otherwise—agricultural products, breeds of dogs, cook fires, epic poetry, postdoctoral programs and maps of the stars.

It may have begun with the formation of language, when we learned to encode the same responses to phenomena in our sense-faculties in systematized sounds or expressions. In this case, since it is our nature to communicate linguistically, as is evident in small children, then it is our nature to receive culture. Feral children deprived of language will not develop culture on their own and are scarcely more intelligent than other apes, but in the crucial period beginning at birth until preschool age, children naturally accept the burden of culture, transmitted via language by their parents. They become aware of the conflict and every decision in their lives will address the conflict.

I do not know if language existed before or after Oldowan toolmaking, so I cannot say which led to the other. Someone fill me in.

>>15862460