The word ‘culture’ is derived from ‘cult’ meaning thereby adhering to some new concept of living as preached by someone being or posing to be the pioneer of the society. A culture may have a multitude of followers but it is always a product of minds of few individuals. After choosing a cult, masses just follow the dictum without giving a thought, rather they are not free for a reasoning out of the cult. Therefore, a culture may be a trap to which a society is pushed into under its composition of conformists, by and large. Cultures take root and grow under shade of conformism only. Free thought always remains beyond its reach.
A civilization, there is no dictum or adherence but a collaborative endeavor of the society to improve quality of life with newer adjustments with the natural circumstances, and forming and defining social circumstances called norms of the society to which everyone is free to adhere or not. Thus, a civilization essentially involves a two-pronged strategy of adapting to natural circumstance and forming social norms of living.
Life and Conduct
Civilization is the way of life, while culture is the way of conduct. This brings us to point of understanding difference between life and conduct. Life is the Highest Common Factor (HCF) while conduct is the Lowest Common Multiple (LCM) where HCF and LCM have same connotations as in Arithmetic – science of numbers. Thus, all the common elements in lives of individuals in a society form civilization. None in the society can afford to live without these common factors without getting isolated from the society. For this reason, elements of civilization are considered as social norms.
Conduct of an individual, or a group thereof, may be different from that of others in the society. It is an artificial insertion of something into social norms or the civilization which may or may not succeed. Thus, a culture may be part of civilization but incapable of containing in itself the whole of civilization.
Those conversant with LCM and HCF, must be knowing that LCM of some numbers is always higher than HCF of these numbers. So, a culture of a society is more visible than the civilization of the humanity. Another reason for more visibility of culture is that the culture is meant for outer display while the civilization is for inner subscription by the people. A culture is an individualistic matter while the civilization encompasses the whole society. Parameter of a culture is number of its subscribers, while that of a civilization is number of norms to be adhered to by all.
Imposition and Subscription
Culture is created by imposing artificially preached beliefs by few individuals to begin with while the civilization gets developed by absorbing scientifically established facts of life and the Universe without any artificial imposition of these but their natural influence on the humanity. Thus, basic nature of civilization is of absorption of facts for devising better ways of living for people while that of a culture is of infusion of presumptions into conduct of its followers.
Norms of civilization are open to all for acceptance or not while those of a culture are imposed on the subscribers. Norms of civilization may be unacceptable for some but can’t be rejected by any, while those of a culture are open for acceptance or rejection.
Global versus Local
Civilization is a global phenomenon while a culture may be a localized matter to begin with that may or may not encompass the global population in its fold. A culture binds the followers to certain dictums while the civilization allows the humanity to get free from binding notions of cultures, religions, faiths, sects, etc
Becoming a world citizen and connecting with others through Internet services is a new element of human civilization while joining some particular website for this purpose is adopting an element of culture.
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