Culture level

Like a certain height, culture is not mastered by every person to the same extent. Therefore, they speak of the level of culture: the level of general culture and the level of culture in some particular respect, the level of a particular culture.

There are many private cultures, we will list only those that are closer and more interesting to us within the framework of practical psychology. There is a physical culture, there is a culture of thinking, there is a culture of speech. The level of psychological culture indicates how theoretically and practically a particular person has mastered the best achievements of psychological science and practice.

In addition to private cultures that characterize the level of cultural development in a particular area, there are «Cultures» as different ways of life that are characteristic of a particular society or group of people. We know that there are different national cultures, there are features of the corporate culture of a particular company, there is a culture of a particular family.

The level of general culture includes:

• Education as a sufficient level of assimilation of systematized knowledge and skills. The secondary education of a student from Buzuluk usually differs from that of a graduate of Moscow State University or Harvard. If a person does not know who wrote «Mumu», does not know where and when Leonardo da Vinci lived, does not distinguish Manet from Kandinsky and does not know a single poem by heart, except for «White Birch Under My Window» (I forgot the author), he were not sufficiently educated.
• Good manners — indicates how familiar a person is with good manners, knows how to adequately behave in society and is used to respecting the people around him. If a person sniffs at the table, interrupts others and does not know which hand to hold the fork and which cutlet — most likely, his level of upbringing will seem insufficient to you.
• Independence of thinking, development of the ability to think independently, not limited to stereotypes and prejudices. If a person took all his beliefs from commercials on TV and is not interested in thinking further, such an interlocutor will hardly be interesting to you.
• The height of motives and values, the development of needs according to Maslow’s pyramid. Indeed, people who are tightly within patterns and have needs at the level of only concern for safety are usually interested in TV and beer, and not practical psychology. The values ​​of the Parasite are primitive, the values ​​of the Romantic are not secured by anything. The values ​​and interests of the Consumer are usually limited to caring only for themselves and their loved ones, the values ​​of the Creator are higher, since he cares not only about himself and his own, but also about the people around him in general.

How to raise the level of general and psychological culture?

The level of culture primarily depends on what a person reads. Caring parents think over the list of books for their children in advance, adults make such lists for themselves. There is no task to read a lot, it is important to read what every cultured and educated person must know. TV and computer games are a hindrance to you, as are low-level friends. It is your environment — the environment that nourishes your culture or what you replace it with. Let you be surrounded by people whom you yourself would like to be like, people whose lifestyle works for your development. Attending quality trainings is a good way to surround yourself with such people.

At the same time, it is important to consider that not all people strive to increase their culture, if only because the decrease in culture is an easy way to make life easier and more convenient.

Slouching and shuffling your feet is more comfortable and easier than holding your back and watching your gait. Washing yourself is an extra chore, pronouncing words is also straining for someone. Cleaning up after yourself, smiling at others — albeit a small one, but also work. But you must? Shave, get up early in the morning, and go to bed on time in the evening, work during the day — and this is a job that sometimes you want to leave. Maybe we won’t? And turn into downshifters. Downshifting is a beautiful name for running away from the work of life.

When people go to simplify life by reducing culture, it becomes easier and more convenient for each individual to live, but soon the space of human life becomes smaller and smaller. Gradually, the basis of human life itself is disappearing, we are returning to wildness to everyday rudeness, bad-smelling elevators and broken glass windows.