Culture and Society

CIVILIZATION is made up of society and culture. It is related to the word civicus, from civis “citizen” – and denotes those living in a civitas or “city” rather than in the sparsely populated country. In modern sociology, civilization refers to an advanced stage of human society, where people live together in a Great Space with a reasonable degree of organization and comfort, and pursue higher achievements, such as the arts, sciences, and education. Civilization is often defined as the opposite of barbarism and chaos. There can be more than one culture and corresponding society within a civilization, although a core culture will always dominate.

SOCIETY is from the Latin, socius, or “companion.” It is a friendly association with others, a collection of individuals who live together under one set of laws or orders. Society is the organization that ties a culture together.

THE STATE is the political organization of society and civil government. However, the word was not used to mean civil government until the 17th century. The ancient Greeks instead used the term polis to mean a “city-state.”²² The Greek idea corresponds to the nation, while the Roman res publica, or “commonwealth,” is similar to the modern republic. The word state comes from the Latin noun status “stand,” or the verb stare, to stand. The word in English first meant “to set by regulation or authority.” The word then evolved to mean a political body with civil authority. A “statist” is one who states or dictates from a position of civil authority. The word “dictator” is a synonym. Note that the word “dictatorship” did not have a negative connotation until the last part of the 19th century and now is synonymous with despotism.

“GOD WALKING ON EARTH” is a paraphrase of the German philosopher, Georg Hegel, to describe the state. In the early 1800s, Hegel wrote that the modern state was God walking on earth. “The march of God in the world, that is what the state is.”²³ Far from being a negative statement, Hegel believed the state, like God, is what sets people free. As a consequence of Hegelian thought, all three Modernist political theories place the authority of the state above God.

NATION-STATE or WESTPHALIAN NATION-STATE is the system named for the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which resolved the conflict between Protestant and Roman Catholic territories of Europe at the conclusion of the Thirty Years War. The resulting balance of power brought about what we know today as the Modern nation-state. The kingdoms of central Europe were organized along geographical boundaries according to groups of people with a common religion, language, and history. Prior to 1648, there were no “countries” as we think of them today, but people were organized into civilizational structures within tribal societies, kingdoms and empires. With the advent of the nation-state, ideological politics started to become more of a factor in the organization of society. As societies became more secularized, traditional culture and religion began to take a back seat to Modernist ideology.

CIVILIZATION STATE is a national alignment with different ethnic groups living in a Great Space or territory unified on the basis of dominant shared culture and religious practice more than politics and ideology.

CULTURE is borrowed from Latin cultūra (“cultivation; culture”), from the verb form of cultus (“till, cultivate, worship”). It has the sense of cultivating something from the soil. We get our English word, “cult,” from the same word, which has a religious connotation. Culture is a worldview that comes from common beliefs, traditions, laws, history, and languages of a people. It is all the ways in which life and institutions of a population are passed down from generation to generation. As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, arts. A culture is the way of life for an entire society. It refers to the knowledge and features of a specific group of people living life together in a geographical space.

HARD CULTURE is all the visible manifestations of culture, including artifacts, dress codes, décor, architectural styles, cuisine, artwork, festivals, flags, civil laws, holidays, national language, etc. It is what an outsider first notices about the culture that makes a society different.

SOFT CULTURE is also visible. This is how a society explains the culture to itself and outsiders. It ranges from laws and widely accepted moral values and beliefs to the products of cultural institutions, such as entertainment, business practices, education, the arts, and politics. These institutions communicate values and beliefs more implicitly than explicitly. Soft culture is a much more powerful way for one culture to impose itself on another because although it is visible, the moral values and beliefs are often communicated in an unstated way. This is often the way foreign cultures gravitate toward Western values and ideals – through movies, music, pop art, cultural icons, slogans, slang words, celebrities. These communicate the values of the culture, rather than through overt indoctrination.

SURFACE CULTURE is all parts of the visible culture, both hard and soft. Hard culture is the “who and what,” soft culture teaches “how.” For example, civil laws and government are part of the hard culture, but the world of politics that produces laws and government is part of the soft culture.

DEEP CULTURE is invisible. This is the most difficult part of a culture for an outsider to see. Deep culture often consists of things not spoken, but rather felt. It is unspoken knowledge and unconscious assumptions that influence our worldview and how we learn and assimilate new information. It is beliefs, values, norms, unspoken rules, expectations, concepts of fairness, social perceptions, importance of punctuality, personal space, modesty, ideal beauty, gender roles, attitudes toward age, etiquette, etc. Deep culture is the hidden assumptions, values and beliefs of the culture – the understood, traditional and unofficial ways of being, doing and feeling that are not directly seen on the surface.

(The process of sharing both surface culture and deep culture helps people to come together and support one another in good and troubled times. It should be noted that the differences between hard, soft, surface and deep culture are on a continuum and there can be an overlap. The point is that when surface culture is adopted from one culture to another, the deeper level of culture is not easily destroyed. Societies can be multiethnic and contain many subcultures. Subcultures can also be absorbed, imitated and can influence a larger culture. However, multiculturalism as a means of promoting egalitarianism in society is nearly impossible except as a transition from one dominant culture to another.)

HARD POWER is purely political. It is the use of the military and economic force of a stronger political state to influence the behavior of other nations. Hard political power is aggressive coercion that is imposed by one more powerful nation upon another of lesser military and economic power.

SOFT POWER is the ability to co-opt rather than coerce. It involves shaping the policies of other nations through appeal and attraction. Soft power is often subversive and invisible, using culture, political values, and foreign policies to enact change. In 2012, Joseph Nye of Harvard University explained that with soft power, “the best propaganda is not propaganda,” but a nation’s soft culture when it is attractive to others.

²² Any word with the suffix -polis or -pol describes a city. Agropolis is a “high city,” the name of a Greek city with a citadel and temple on a hill. Megopolis is a “large city.” Metropolis is the “mother city” of smaller colonies or towns. Cosmopolis is a “world city” or a city with diverse cultures from around the world.

²³ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 1837.

Glossary Headings

Political Theories
Modern Political Movements
Forms of Government
Modern Political Counterfeits
Political World Orders
Culture and Society
Epistemology
Globalism
Regional and Global Organizations
World Reserve Currency
World Financial Organizations
Globalist Think Tanks, Theories, and Doctrines

Book

The Fourth Political Theory in Biblical Perspective

Jay Rogers

A Christian civilization is emerging from under the wreckage of Modern culture.

A Christian civilization is emerging from under the chaos that has been strewn throughout the wreckage of Modern culture. As dawn breaks through the darkness, many will be awakened to a new understanding of the fulfillment of the Law through love and grace. Many will comprehend, as if for the first time, what it means to be truly human. We are being prepared to overcome a world system that has denied God, faith, family, and even humanity itself. This book analyzes and critiques several leading experts in the theory of the rising multipolar world including –

• The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
• The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington
• The Fourth Political Theory by Aleksandr Dugin