Culture Holds Society Together?

For ages, one of the most important questions has been what characterizes people’s lives as human beings. In this sense, the way how people think, believe and behave should be considered. In other words, individual values are crucial to shape people’s lives. However, it cannot be ignored that people live in societies which bring people together. Hence, it is almost impossible to think that individual values are not affected by societal norms. Since society creates its own moral, social, political, economic and traditional values, people individualize common values and apply them in their own lives. Even though all individuals have personal beliefs and thoughts, they cannot ignore general norms in order to keep pace with communal life. Communal life makes people share common cultural aspects. When people experience similar values with each other, they enjoy coming together. Moreover, under particular conditions, values of individuals can change. However, unless they experience acceptance in the society, they usually give up their personal values to correspond with the cultural norms. Therefore, it can be argued that because people live together, they reflect culture to their lifestyles, thus culture has an important role to hold a society together. To illustrate, in order to examine how people’s attitude changes from culture to culture, values related to cohabitation, homosexuality and morality will be analyzed thoroughly in this essay. The differences between personal values are because of the distinct between the social values. Values are created to show the characteristic of individuals or groups. Hence, they help to understand the differences between people and groups of people. For example, one person can believe that marriage is an important criterion for living together. However, the other one can think that it is not necessary when they love each other. Hence, these two different people shape their lives differently according to their values and beliefs.