The importance of culture – myths, symbols, arts, science, history.

The real question is whether the culture can influence the way we think and experience the world. Clearly we have to realize that the culture is something that lies within us, around us, and is an integral part of our being. It defines the way we treat others and ourselves. Culture forms an important element of social life of a man. It gives the individuals or groups the feelings of unity with the group.
What exactly is culture, anyway? Term "culture" is based on a term used by the Ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes, where he included a cultivation of the soul or “cultura animi” using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood theologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. In Latin “culture” is “cultus agri”, which is crop land, in other words, a subjugation of nature by a man. The meaning of this phrase developed gradually, from its simplicity to a more complex form. It includes everything that has been ever made by a particular group of people, independently of a material world (architecture, clothes) but also a spiritual one.

Just a single person simply cannot create culture, so we can talk about the beginnings of culture from the moment when our ancestors started to form groups. Originally culture was passed on as thoughts and ideas, but then with invention of symbolism also art and science. It is permanent but also constantly evolve and transform to adapt to modern times assimilating new elements while reinterpreting and recycling those already existing. A person is undergoing a process of culturalization by the society he is part of since the moment of birth. It is the society that sets the rules that he should follow and normalizes behaviors proper for given environment. For example, in China it is a common thing to eat a dog, who would think about that in our cultural circle? On the other hand a mere thought of a pickle could make somebody who raised up in different society sick. While in some societies tattooing is a ritual of transition from being a child to being an adult, other regulate length at which women can keep their hair. Our place of upbringing influences even such basic things as utensils we use in everyday life and what technology we have access to, how we look and what do we experience. All that undoubtedly forms who we are and how we perceive the world. Those similarities are crucial for building social bonds, since it is a fact that we prefer people we think are similar to ourselves the most.

Talking about similarities, myths lie at the base of culture. The seeds of a mythic story run deep. Myths were before art was, before language or the written word. Myths sprung up before religion. Myth is before philosophy and science. The great mythic themes were known before literature. Myths created by our oldest ancestors, stories about creation of the world, the first man and woman, heaven and Earth, a great flood, tales of gods, goddesses and heroes and heroines and dragons and serpents are efforts to give some sense to life and death, we can believe that our daily actions are part of the deities' grand schemes and to find our place in surrounding us unknown and dangerous world. As Joseph Campbell said, in An Open Life, "The imagery of mythology is symbolic of spiritual powers within us”, "In the long view of the history of mankind, four essential functions of mythology can be discerned. The first and most distinctive – vitalizing all – is that of eliciting and supporting a sense of awe before the mystery of being.", "The second function of mythology is to render a cosmology, an image of the universe that will support and be supported by this sense of awe before the mystery of the presence and the presence of a mystery.", "A third function of mythology is to support the current social order, to integrate the individual organically with his group;", "The fourth function of mythology is to initiate the individual into the order of realities of his own psyche, guiding him toward his own spiritual enrichment and realization."
There are various types of myths.
In The Global Myths, Alexander Eliot defined four types of myth: * Primitive myths (which were generally stories about nature, as told by shamans). * Pagan myths (which were mostly from the Greek and Roman tales of the interplay between deities and humans). * Sacred myths (as in the stories from current eastern and western religions such as Christianity and Hinduism). * Scientific myths (i.e., "the most solemn and revered creeds of science -- from Lucretius on Nature through Darwin's The Origin of Species").
David Adams Leeming, in The World of Myth, listed four other types: * Cosmic myths (including narratives of the creation and end of the world). * Theistic myths (which portray the deities). * Hero myths (with accounts of individuals such as Achilles and Jesus). * "Place and object" myths (describing places such as Camelot, and objects such as the Golden Fleece).
We find references to ancient myths that live in our culture in many modern words and expressions, such as Pandora's Box, Oedipus complex, nymph, and olympian. Other words derived from mythology include adonis (from Adonis), aurora (from Aurora), chlorophyll (from Chloris), chronology (from Kronos), discipline (from Disciplina), discord (from Discordia), eros (from Eros), fate (from Fate), fauna (from Faunus), fidelity (from Fides), flora (from Flora), fortune (from Fortuna), fraud (from Fraus), Hades (from Hades), Hell (from Hel), hygiene (from Hygieia), jovial (from Jove), liberty (from Libertas), lunar (from Luna), morphine (from Morpheus), mortality (from Mors), mute (from Muta), narcissism (from Narcissus), nemesis (from Nemesis), ocean (from Oceanus), -- and the names of the planets, and some of the months (including Janus for January), etc. Mars (the Roman war god) is remembered in words such as Mars (the planet), March (the month), and martial (as in martial arts).
Myths present guidelines for living and explain the unexplainable. Myth makes clear every culture's similarities as surely as it insists on each culture's uniqueness. Mythologies teach respect for alien culture. Noble tries of clarify incomprehensible for them natural phenomena, how else could they explain passing of seasons or that mighty sparks from the sky smite everything around setting fire to someone’s safe shelter – apparently some powerful entity sends them in rage – what is my fault, what should I do to avoid such fate?
A culture's mythology is a powerful tool for psychology, casting light on the culture's shared unconscious. There is no better way to understand a culture deeply than to know and appreciate its mythos, its stories and its dreams.
Myth is also a tale of the origin of man, it endowed greatness and raised above other creatures but also other tribes – we are the chosen ones, better that “them”. In such meaning first started to form social bond and determined how to live. Passed at first from mouth to mouth stories depicted situations every person could find themself in and showed the ways to act at such times. When groups started to merge into bigger tribes myths merged too and enriched creating whole mythologies and as such were more complex with full set of different deities and demons as well as rituals to perform by people to appease said gods and rules to abide to not to anger them and bring misfortune themselves. They described particular place of that society in the world. Mythologies were roots of later believes and religions which on contrary from myths are not so susceptible to change.
Nowadays myths are associated mostly with ancient times however mythical personas and events infiltrated modern culture and are archetypes of many today’s heroes of literature or cinema. Still we draw inspiration and morph them to what we need in present time.
Nevertheless myth have a great impact on us to this day. Myths derived from fear of the unknown, stories everybody heard but cannot pin its source. Any kind of paranormal stories, from the reports of UFO sightings at different corners of the world to Bermuda Triangle. However those myths are not as meaningful as for example national myths creating in minds of people exaggerated and embellished vision of country they come from, or show different nationalities in a bad light.

Nowadays advertisement creator depend largely on myths presenting their products as the best one and irreplaceable and their user as mythical heroes. For instance have a look at any car advertisement. They show us their closeness to magical properties and their owners to mythological demigods. Mythical character on a mythical creature. Today’s media and fashion take from myths creating in people mindset idealized form of human – near-god walking the Earth.

Significant part of what we feel and how we perceive world is based on symbols. All symbolic representation has its genesis in the social, ideological and political concepts which define our culture. Starting from language and numbers that allow us to describe surrounding world and express ourselves. Those are known to the general public that we live in and take the great part of defining what we are thinking about by canvasing our thoughts. Symbols are also commonly understandable signs that allow to know our surrounding efficiently. These are any type of graphical illustration that we see in everyday life where some of them inform us where to go or what to avoid when other let us distinguish differentiate ourselves or distinguish other people with similar ideology or other kinds of bonds, such signs are not necessarily obvious and their meaning is not so easy understandable for everybody.
Symbols that we use, as distinct from signs, carry multiple meanings depending on the context and culture in which they appear. They are an important and integral element in understanding culture. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz explained that “our symbolic world is used as a vehicle for our concepts; they represent how we conceive of our world. The conception of the symbol is its meaning.” He claimed that “religious symbolic behavior or acts were specific creators of mood for the individual but also, because of their religious purpose, provided motivation.” Another interpretive anthropologist, Victor Turner, believed that “symbols are not just vehicles for meaning, but by their very use, create meaning, understanding and solidarity in relationships. “
We bestow symbolic properties to things naturally occurring in environment. For instance a lion is commonly considered as a symbol of strength and courage or just let us look at a national flag as a symbol. Every nation has one so we can adopt that each country regards their flag as a symbol of the unity of their people. Clearly it represents a specific identification with ‘nationhood’ or even ‘ethnicity’. Most importantly, it represents a collective - a common affiliation. To tell the truth, the entirety of our world is built upon symbols. Those sings that define what do we experience, what do we desire and how do we think. Thanks to symbols we can easily communicate between each other and form groups. Symbolism we know greatly encloses our thought processes because through them we interpret experiences and what we deem important and valuable. Symbolism also has enormous importance in determination of groups and sense of belonging, often defining main goals and ideals of that group.

Art emerged from symbolism. At the beginning bound mostly to spiritualism depicted images of deities and tales of mythical events told before, later it penetrated all aspects of life and with its help mankind became capable to present its interpretation of visions, characters or events but also through assigning to them specified shapes and colors endow them with emotional charge. Art is about crossing boundaries and seeing things in different ways it can be a vehicle for public discussion, understanding social issues, and building social connections. Through participation and political action, citizens can shape their community to better reflect their values.
Art enhance the quality of living - it brings about personal enjoyment, enriching perspectives, intellectual stimulation.
Art can be used to engage youth in public activities such as beautifying urban spaces by painting wall murals. All it takes is some creativity and collective wisdom to think of the myriad ways that culture and the arts can be used for community benefit.
Since the dawn of time art held for mankind great value and the creator often were considered as inspired. Artist was able define anew magnitude of events or characters in minds of people.
That’s why art was strongly connected with power and had significant influence over social life. It was art that gave form to great leader and nations, without it nothing would have such meaning as it has, everything would be the same and without any expression. It is mostly due to art that we discover our history and tradition, it contributes greatly to the sense of national identity. We also owe it international contacts because art is single best medium of culture and thanks to it we can easily get to know manners and traditions of other people populating our planet.
It is hard not to appreciate importance of art in life of an individual human being. Not only it provides entertainment but also when we come in contact with it, it opens a whole new world of experiences and sensations in front of us. We can break away from everyday life, rise above our carnality and face unusual situations, visions or invoked with sound feelings. Through that we experience a wide range of many new emotions, it widens our perception with artists vision and grants us broader look at the world and its problems.
“We need new ideas, we need new ways of doing things and we need a whole new way of approaching each other with much more empathy and understanding. This means that the rest of society really needs to focus on the world of art and culture as a vital source for not only solutions, but also ways of finding solutions… and a whole knew concept of what a valuable life really means.” – Uffe Elbaek, former Danish Minister of Culture
Art enriches people with new dimensions of life, all those experiences influence how personality develops, through art we learn sensibility and it helps us in better knowing ourselves and opens us to other people and lets us to know them better.

But its science that lets us understand the world that surrounds us. Science influences culture, in many societies, by playing a major role in shaping cultural worldviews, concepts, and thinking patterns. Science has had an increasingly strong influence on European culture. Scientists discovered that the movement of the stars is predictable, and all that earthly and heavenly occurrences follow the same scientific laws like a clockwork. They deeply believed, according to the Galileian vision, that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, with characters depicted by geometric objects. The mission of science was to explore the laws of nature, and thereby clarify all natural phenomena. This faith in science gave rise to the philosophical movement called positivism, which led to a widespread trust in science and technology and affected social theory. Even after positivism fade away, the Darwinian theory of evolution still influenced social phenomena, most particularly eugenics and racism. . The faith given by scientific progress in the possibilities still forms the beliefs and actions of people today; in fact, statements such as “this has been scientifically demonstrated,” are often used to cut short a discussion. Thanks to science and its development, mankind stopped basing everything on mere speculations and baseless explanations of unknown origins and started studying and collecting knowledge about the world. Science let human really rise above other creatures ensuring permanently privileged state and led to highly improving standard and length of life. Nowadays science and technology develops tremendously fast and because of that once humungous strange and unfamiliar world substantially shrunk. Unlike the original purpose of science, modern scientific development focuses greatly on practical use trying to detach and make independent human from nature. Thoughts of many different kinds of genetic experiments come to mind. Despite great number of discoveries those still cause concern about future of human race.

History on the other hand is an adhesive that conjoins present with the past. Impact of historical knowledge on society becomes apparent in bonds created by nation. People need to know the roots of their culture, without them they are homeless and without identity they would stop existing as a nation. Furthermore knowledge of history allows better orientation in present world, like a bird’s eye view you can watch causes of world’s greatest successes and failures one is able to predict many situations and prevent some of them in time. Such knowledge also allows to look past the present and see how the world and human history is shaped, lets us see more than the tip of our nose, let our imagination soar and mold the future.

"Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the course of centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved." —Andre Malraux
In the end, giving an answer to the question about how important a culture is in a human life, we have to perceive that we face with many forms of it, in almost every aspects of life and it shapes in what way we think of ourselves and other people in general. Also how we look, what we wear and what are our eating habits. We perceive things by our judgment skills, preconceived notions, attitude, and emotions. Culture forms the framework for our thoughts and behavior It also defines how much a technology or social life looks like. Everything that surround us, how we comprehend the world, it creates and intersperse our culture. Undoubtedly, it is the biggest source of who we are as a whole nation and as an individual human being.

Bibliography
Campbell, J. The power of Myth
Kraków, 1994

Campbell, J. The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Poznań, 1997

Stout, James Harvey. “Myths-Dreams-Symbols.” http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/importanceofmyth.html 23 January 2016.