Culture
| Human society statistics | |
|---|---|
| World population | 7.1 billion |
| Population density | 12.7 per km² (4.9 mi²) by total area 43.6 per km² (16.8 mi²) by land area |
| Largest agglomerations | Beijing, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Delhi, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos, Lima, London, Los Angeles, Manila, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, New York City, Osaka, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tehran, Tianjin, Tokyo, Wuhan |
| Most widely spoken languages | Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, Javanese, Punjabi, Telugu, Vietnamese, French, Marathi, Turkish, Korean, Tamil, Italian, Urdu, Indonesian |
| Most popular religions | Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Baha'i |
| GDP (nominal) | $36,356,240 million USD ($5,797 USD per capita) |
| GDP (PPP) | $51,656,251 million IND ($8,236 per capita) |
Humans are highly social beings and tend to live in large complex social groups. More than any other creature, humans are adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization, and as such have created complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups. Human groups range from families to nations. Social interactions between humans have established an extremely wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which together form the basis of human society.
Culture is defined here as patterns of complex symbolic behavior, i.e. all behavior that is not innate but which has to be learned through social interaction with others; such as the use of distinctive material and symbolic systems, including language, ritual, social organization, traditions, beliefs and technology.
Read more about this topic: Human
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It’s become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.”
—Malcolm McLaren (b. 1946)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)