What is Culture? The invisible glue that holds (or divides) societies

Have you ever stopped to think about why you feel "at home" when you meet someone who laughs at the same memes, recommends the same series, and understands your references?

Or why you feel completely out of place somewhere you don't understand the local jokes, the table manners, or what people consider "polite"?

That powerful feeling of belonging—and its opposite, the feeling of strangeness—has a name: culture.

What is Culture, Anyway?

It is the invisible operating system that runs in every human society.

It's not just in museums or classic books; it's in the way you greet a stranger, in what your family considers "real food," in the stories we tell our children before bed, and even in that strange feeling when someone breaks a social rule you didn't even know existed.

The Human Need for Social Glue

If culture is so ever-present, why do we need it? Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud offered a fascinating answer: culture is the necessary brake that enables life in society.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud argues that culture is born as a barrier against our most primitive instincts—aggressiveness, uncontrolled sexual desire, the impulse to take everything for ourselves.

Without these brakes, living together would be impossible. Therefore, culture is not an intellectual luxury: it is the minimum condition for humans to coexist without destroying each other.

From the Tribal Fire to the Instagram Feed

If in ancient societies culture manifested through myths, rituals, and oral narratives around the fire, over the centuries it expanded into written, architectural, artistic, and institutional forms.

With modernity and the invention of the printing press, it became more accessible and reproducible. Today, in the 21st century, culture is inevitably layered with a new element: digital technology.

Social media, streaming, artificial intelligence, and platforms shape the way we consume and share culture. Never has humanity had such access to knowledge—and never has it been so vulnerable to excess and dispersion.

The article "A Brief History of Culture" is the starting point for unraveling how humans create meaning - continue exploring to understand the deep connections between culture, technology, and thought.

Art, Culture, and Mass Culture: Understanding the Differences

It's important to distinguish between frequently confused concepts:

Culture

It is the whole—the set of symbolic practices, languages, norms, and knowledge that give cohesion to a society. It ranges from religious rituals to the way we use our phones.

Art

It is a singular expression within culture. It seeks to create meanings, question, provoke, and evoke emotion.

Not all culture is art; but all art is culture.

Mass Culture (or Culture Industry)

A concept established by the Frankfurt School (Adorno and Horkheimer), it refers to the standardized and commercialized production of cultural goods, destined for mass consumption.

Formulaic movies, disposable music, series produced like an assembly line: it all fits here.

Its risk is reducing the cultural experience to a product, dissolving the critical spirit.

The Contemporary Symptom: Information Without Digestion

This is where we stumble. Technological abundance has turned culture into symbolic fast-food. Everything is quick, pre-chewed, served in pills for immediate consumption. The danger? Mistaking quantity for quality.

Binge-watching a series is not the same as reflecting on it.

Reposting a beautiful quote does not mean understanding it.

The logic of "content at any cost" is a caricature of what Freud called the repression of instincts: it doesn't restrain anything, it just disguises it under the illusion of participation.

We have become collectors of stimuli, but increasingly poor in authentic experiences.

Conclusion: Choosing is the New Knowing

Between excess and choice, culture is inevitable: it is the symbolic air we breathe. Freud already knew that without it, there would be no civilization.

The contemporary challenge is not just to consume culture, but to filter, choose, and reflect on what surrounds us.

Art continues to offer windows to the unexpected, while mass culture provides immediate entertainment.

Between the two, the individual needs to learn to be selective: to know when to let themselves be carried by lightness and when to seek depth.

After all, in the technological excess we live in, cultivating a conscious relationship with culture is, perhaps, the greatest possible act of freedom.

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