Courses

Thursday 19 January 2012

CULTURE


Culture is a broad term which has been described by various philosophers since decades. It has been claimed by Raymond Williams to be “one of the two or three most complicated words in English language”. Different definitions of the term, Culture, may have distinct descriptive ways and criterion to evaluate human activity. It is important to define the broad base of the sophisticated term ‘culture’. Culture is a word stemming from a Latin word ‘cultura’ which means to cultivate. It is defined by Findley and Rothney as, “systems of symbols and meanings that even their creator contest, which lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another"
    ‘Pakistani culture’ is hard to be defined due to its complex nature. It is a topic that can be debated upon. In fact, Pakistani culture is not the way it’s supposed to be. It is influenced by many different cultures. Some people justify it as we have a shared history with various nations like Arabs, Hindus, Afghans, Turks, etc and we had been colonized by British. But in my opinion, it’s not a justified answer. It is basically a matter of unawareness about the real meaning of culture and knowledge of history. As we know, Pakistan was made in the name of Islam so that Muslims could practice their religious  activities without any hindrance. Unfortunately, we forgot about it and could not develop faith in our religion and Pakistani culture. Now, our culture is a mixture of western, Indian & other cultures. It might be because of globalization, as the geographical boundaries are meaningless because of powerful media and communication resources. On the other hand, we could not develop our film industry. So, our cinema is replaced by Indian and English cinema.
Similarly, we have a lot of foreign brands in clothing and accessories, cosmetics, shoes, food chains, etc. Even we import architecture and shopping malls. So, our new generation is very much influenced by all that. They feel proud to adopt western culture. In fact, it has now become a status symbol. They feel ‘cool’ to have an ‘independent life style.’ This way, they have forgotten all their cultural values, etiquettes and lifestyle.
  This is an alarming situation, where we have to take serious actions to rectify it. In the first place, we have to spread education

No comments:

Post a Comment