Insights | The Transmission of Culture

A few weeks ago, I was given this topic for a talk : "The Transmission of Culture ." So, I spent several days wondering: How can we actually transmit it? And, above all, what are the factors that truly enable it? Below, I leave you with my reflections. Peace

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This topic, among other things, will be explored in depth in a chapter of a new book on Hip Hop Culture , which I am writing. For all the info, follow HipHopSeeds.com on the web and on Instagram . This year and next will see the release of a few very interesting books on our culture.

Transmission of Culture

The first thing that came to mind was that, in general, we should ask ourselves what the true meaning of everything is , so if we want to transmit culture, first of all we need to know what culture means, just like word and meaning, etymology is important and helps us understand many things about it.

In this case, Culture comes from cultivating , so it is linked to making something grow and develop it , but what is being cultivated in this case? Knowledge is being cultivated , in fact Culture is clearly intertwined with Knowledge, and for us as Hip Hop Heads and for us as Zulu Nation even more so, given that it is our fifth element, "knowledge" , so we are completely immersed in this theme. If this element were not there, we would not be talking about Hip Hop Culture. 

So what is culture, really, understood as the process of developing a culture ? Because a culture, in the broadest sense, is generally a set of characteristics that identify a population; Neapolitan culture is different from Venetian, Italian from American, etc. However, we know that a person can develop a culture —scientific, literary, etc.—and this is what I want to talk about. The first version of culture , which we mentioned, can also simply be undergone , such as being born in Italy and absorbing Italian culture and expressing it (not necessarily knowing it) simply because I live there. The second, however, implies an active component ; developing a culture is active. 

I wasn't born in the Bronx in the 70s so I have to get a Hip Hop culture, I cultivated myself in Hip Hop , got it? 

Culture, understood in this sense , is a search for understanding; it is an evolution of consciousness . Through culture, consciousness expands, developing a new vision , an understanding of a thing or subject, changing its value status.

Something that was once unimportant now becomes so (just as other things that were once unimportant lose their importance). This is why culture is love, because it gives value to things, because it wants to know them in depth. In this case, we fall in love with something more abstract, "Hip Hop Culture," but if we fall in love with something abstract, it's usually because it reflects us , so it would be better to learn about it, so by knowing it, we will also know ourselves better.

In fact , true culture, not the exhibitionism of knowledge, which is something else entirely, and therefore knowledge , is penetration into things. It's as if Culture, in general, sought to penetrate space. Because it is knowledge of space . In fact, it's interesting to understand that we ourselves are space. We are clothed in the space we inhabit. We are collections of atoms, like all the space we inhabit. 

So, to recap, Culture allows us to know ourselves and whether we are good internally as well.

So, having understood what culture is, how do you transmit it?

How to transmit culture, well, first you have to fall in love with it and get to know it, then understand it and appreciate it (which isn't so obvious) , then you have to continue to love it and not lose the passion, because passion is the search for experiencing love—enjoying it, deriving pleasure from it.   In fact, passion creates a fire, a spark that makes the person seductive in a certain sense . You see the person, or rather you feel them, who has passion for something, you sense the love they put into it. 

Here, the transmission of culture and teaching are the transmission of love, of this desire to know and understand with passion, and this is fundamental. 

In addition to passion, to be effective, something more is also needed . To be effective, a teacher (i.e., the person who transmits culture) can have two characteristics: 

1) Being strong in an element of Hip Hop culture , and achieving success through it. The medium here is the strong appeal one has over others through admiration. 

2) be seductive , in a certain sense, because teaching is too (psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati also says so). If we think about it, it's also quite banal, because you have to make a subject that normally requires effort appealing (in fact, we said that acquiring a culture is an active process). 

So you have to make it seductive, but not with tricks, even if they help, but with passion, and the passion for learning is reasoning . Helping someone make the switch through reason. 

The transmission of Culture means being able to make them see what they couldn't see before. Helping them lift the veil that covered a certain vision. Helping them self-reveal a profound meaning. This self-revelation is very important; the switch doesn't come from the outside, but always from within. It's consciousness reaching a new meaning , literally: it grasps it for the first time. 

This internal switch usually manifests as a "Wow!" I've never seen it like this before! That's it, a momentary falling in love with a new vision.  Like a child with a surprise. 

Therefore, transmitting culture is not just repeating the same old story, but showing the same old story from a completely new perspective, one that is deeper, more comprehensive, and above all, more meaningful and valuable.

This makes us fall in love with knowledge and the search for new meanings within things.

I hope I was sexy enough for you all! Smack

[article by Ahki Smogone]