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The Genesis of Culture
- LANGAA RPCIG
- Chapter
- Additional Information
11 The Genesis of Culture C ulture has a two-fold origin, a psychological and a historical, that is, culture takes birth in man, and at a point of time, in the story of the world. I do not intend here to go into the origin and the evolution of culture through the ages. My intention is to find out how culture is born in man so that, from his investigation, I may acquire a clearer and deeper understanding of its nature. Culture takes rise from this that man is born into the world incomplete. Not that at birth he lacks any part necessary to make him a full human being, but that, although complete with regard to his composition, he is still incomplete with regard to his physical extension; incomplete in this that his spiritual faculties, though really present, are still lying dormant awaiting time and exercise and growth to attain maturity. Furthermore, to make life easier for animals, nature not only supplies them with some of their needs directly (coats of hair for animals, and feathers for birds) but endows others with complete skills which they ply without any previous apprenticeship whatsoever-witness the bee, witness the ant, witness the nest-building birds. On the contrary, man is not born innately supplied with knowledge and skill. He is equipped with reason and left to fend for himself, to use his mind to solve for himself the problems of his existence. Briefly, therefore, man is not born in the fullness of his being; and thus in order to survive, to live and develop in himself, he has need of many things external to himself. 12 Bernard N. Fonlon Furthermore, even when he has attained the flower of his manhood, other needs still remain; for, from the cradle to the grave, man is racked by a hundred undying thirsts; he is like a void that never fills. In other words, man has various needs of a permanent nature. Since these needs are ever-present, ever-gnawing, it is necessary for man to forge permanent ways of satisfying them. It is in the search for ways and means to supply his wants that man creates culture. The psychological origin of any given cultural element, therefore, is a specific human need. Each human need poses a problem. To solve this problem man has to think. He has to think because he is surrounded by a hundred things and he has to know both the nature of his need and the nature of things to determine which of them can satisfy that need. Furthermore, there are few cases, like that of water and thirst, for example, where the thing as it is can directly supply the need. But more often than not, the thing has to be transformed in order to suit his need: food must be cultivated and prepared, shelter and clothing must be fashioned from suitable material. Through observation thought and experiment, man finally discovers or elaborates a method of carrying out such a transformation, and through more observation, more thought and more experiment improves upon this method. As we all know, man can satisfy his needs only by using the things that surround him in the external world, and to fit thing to need he must think. But he cannot think about the world outside his mind unless that outside world is somehow or other represented in his mind. Happily, thanks to his senses and to abstraction, man is able to create in his mind ideas on concepts of the things about him. Therefore, for every object that exists, there is a corresponding concept. And it is by comparing concepts to see the relations they bear one to the other that man thinks. [54.205.243.115] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:08 GMT) 13 Challenge of Culture in Africa: From Restoration to Integration But in order to render these concepts more precise, in order to be able to state more clearly, even to himself, the problems he encounters and the solutions he forges for them, in order to communicate these answers to others, in order to preserve them for posterity, man needs something in addition to concepts, namely, a means of expressing these concepts verbally, externally. He needs to give names to things and to the relations that exist between them; in short, he needs language. There are three things, therefore, in this process: the world of things gives rise to the world of thought and the world...