Shape Our Culture

There are many aspects that shape our modern culture. Religions, media, families, society in general are just a hand full of the many things that shape our culture.
Religion has a huge affect on culture. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next. It is noticeable everywhere you go. Religion is based on these factors to ‘spread their word'. Holy buildings, like churches and mosques, are the hot spot to shape our culture. Language is used to teach the congregation (or similar) with the repeated call and responses and lots of long winded readings from their holy book. They obey to the language that they hear coming from the priest, from the moment the mass begins.
Material objects are used throughout religion. There is always a Holy Book. This book, like the priest's calls, is obeyed word for word. The Commandments tell you exactly what not to do and they are strictly followed. There are
objects used on alters such as cups, dishes and cloths that carry sacred food and drink. The material objects that are the main key to shaping our culture are religious symbols. The Christians use their Cross of Christ and the Islam has their Crescent Moon. All the many symbols are branded everywhere in our culture. They have even reached the shelves of all the top market brands, but they, however, do not include our blessed Jesus pinned on them. A statue of Buddha, nevertheless, makes a great gift.
Rituals appear in every upmarket religion. The set of actions that comprise a ritual often include, but are not limited to, such things as readings, singing, group processions, repetitive dance, use of sacred objects, etc. The general purpose of rituals is to express some basic truth or meaning, evoke spiritual, emotional responses from participants. Mass itself is a ritual. Christians adopt the stand-up-sit-down method while many others like to kneel on the floor and adopt the bend-up-bend-down.
Each Religion has its own institutions, as I have already mentioned. Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples, Shrines are some of the "institutions" or ‘places of worship' found among the many religions in today's culture. They all have their individual rules to be followed. Many places of worship are of special historical, architectural or cultural significance and attract pilgrims and tourists. Such as the Pilgrimage to the Mecca, which is believed should be attempted at least once by all Muslims that are able. It is, in fact, a culture requirement in order to be considered a "true Muslim". Some even make it into a "family outing" as the whole family go on the pilgrimage together.
Families hugely affect our culture. Parents, in most cases, choose their children's lives; their religion, clothes, school, wealth, possessions etc. Parents choose where their child will be brought up. This will affect what culture they will have to adapt to. The parents will then send their child to school, private or a comprehensive. There they will interact with other school children who come from their own cultures.
People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another, with the help of media. Cultures both embrace and resist change, dependence of culture traits. For example, men and women have equal roles in many cultures. One sex might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in most modern western cultures. Cultural change can come about due to the environment, to inventions, and contact with other cultures. The end of the Ice Age helped lead to the invention of "farming" that brought about many cultural innovations. In some cases the culture change can be something that is brought across but it's ‘connotations' stayed behind. When, for example, the hamburger, something everyday in the western world, arrived in China it was seen as exotic. However, cultures can also collide with each other and, according to Hermann Hesse, "when two cultures collide [it] is the only time when true suffering exists". There have been many conflicts between countries and cultures over various causes. The cultures involved fight for their beliefs and ‘traits', against another culture that fights for theirs. This causes changes to take place in these cultures and countries and this can be ‘blamed' indirectly at government.
Government decide what is allowed and what is not allowed in their land.
They have authoritative control over the affairs of others. Government provide internal and external security, order, and justice; most are involved in providing welfare services, regulating the economy, and establishing educational systems. These all shape our culture. In totalitarianism, the ‘government' is given absolute power over not only all economic and political matters but the attitudes, values, and beliefs of its population, erasing the distinction between country and society. The goal of the country (or state) is the replacement of existing society with a perfect society. A key example of this is Nazi Germany which attempted to establish the superiority of their Aryan race. All Nazis had to be a non-Jewish Caucasian with blond hair and blue eyes. This shaped Germany's culture in the 1940s to become a single unit. There was a lack of individualism and less of the obvious separate culture traits between each
person.
To conclude, there is no single catalyst that directly shapes our culture. I have covered only a small portion of them above. It seems that everything tends to shape our culture from clothes to our government. Gender, alone, is a culture itself and that is determined by what gender you are born. Men used to ‘dominate' the earth, but now, woman are starting to have equal (or better) rights than them. I believe that we shape our own culture by our own choices and actions. Whatever is popular at the time, people will follow whether it is a religion, t-shirt, TV-show, or a new President.