Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.
Where do you stand in the new culture wars?
However, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns.
We are a culture that likes to move through time with dispatch. Most cultures think of time as a circle. We think of it as an arrow, whistling forward. The future interests us so keenly we are happy, actually eager, to say farewell to the past. Most cultures revere tradition. We practice amnesia. We like to keep moving.
