Lesson 44 Patterns of cultureFirst listen and then answer the following question.What influences us from the moment of birth?Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of any great moment.The inner workings of our own brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation,but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace.As a matter of fact, it is the other way around.Traditional custom, taken the world over,is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant.Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter.The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes.He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes;his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs.
