Culture is Mental Programming

Now that we have defined the term "culture" in the previous article, we now need to take the next step. In the book "Cultures & Organizations" by Geert Hofstede et all there is an impressive description of how every person is mentally programmed.

As we know, every person ticks differently. Everyone thinks and feels differently. Every person carries patterns which have been learned throughout the persons life. A lot of habits is accuired in early childhood, because at this time a person is most susceptible to learning and assimilating. And as soon as certain patterns of thinking or acting are established in a persons mind its quite hard to unlearn those patterns before being able to learn something different.

So from this we learn that the sources of ones mental program lies within the social environment in which one grew up and colleced life experiences. That means in the end culture is learned, not innate. It derives from the environment of each individuum rather than from ones genes.