CULTURE:

When i define culture as all of the things we do not have to do, i am thinking of this definition as being functional--i am thinking of it as something that remains, on a daily basis, something we choose to do--be a part of a culture.  We don't have to be a part of a culture in this sense, but we choose to be.  Usually this cultural designation is achieved by associating oneself with things that give our social currency meaning.  Thus if one drives a Saab, they would be a part of a culture that is brought together by a commodity, however old or new that Saab might be.  There is the nice feeling of driving by another one, or of one driving by you.  And the feeling is of relief that you are not the only one that feels a certain way about a thing.  Now, id one drives a shitty car, the feeling is reverse.  This is the feeling i have right now because i do not own a Saab, i own a shitty American car.  Thus i have a negative relationship with the functional culture of Saab owners, as i am not an owner.  How is this something "i don't have to do?"  Do i need to drive a car--i mean really need to?  No.  That fact is i drive a car because i choose to do so in a functional, meaning ful way.  Thus i have extended an ability of humans to design and create peices of metal, plastic, electronics, fluids, combustions that moves me between point  A and B at a much faster rate than normally would be achievable with the purely simple "shoe leather express."

Another example.

I choose to cut my hair a certain way, and for the past ten years or so it has been in a full cutting manner--thus i have no hair.  this is a conscious choice i ahve made about the way people percieve me, what i look like, and from this they make an entire catalog of assumptions about me before they even talk to me, touch me, smell me, etc.  The ocular priority of this functional choice i have made with my hair remains at a very superficial level, but this is the mode of this definition of culture--it is at the most general, most superficial, most "thing-oriented" definition--because, most of the time we operate at this level in our daily, day to day experiences, conversations, notions, assumptions.   Society by its very nature is very cliched, general and superficial.  It works at the level of economic and social needs--the things that are there for us to buy as consumers and sytle ourselves after.  Who am i styling my hair after when i choose to shave it all off?  Well, sometimes i feel like Yul Brenner, sometimes Michael Jordan, sometimes Sinead O'Connor.  But all of these people i have refeffed too also use their own hairstylings to define themselves as a part of a functional culture--"short haired people."  We do not have to cut our hair at all.  It is something we do not have to do, but we do it because we personally feel it as in our interest to do so.  Thus for example again, a corporate desk clerk might do his usual mundane jobs and tasks, but in the back of his mind he might really want to be a tank commander.  thus he might style his hair as a tank commander might.   but he is really a desk jockey hoping to climb up the office ladder so he can get a desk by the water cooler.  this is the reality of his socio-economic position, but it does not have to be the reality of his imaginative functional culture.  This definition of "culture" comes afterwards, something that comes out of a specific level of affluence that is very Western Capitalist, technocratic, "democratic:"  many people in other places do not have the choice or the luxury to pick what functional hair stylings they might have.  This is the second definition of culture.