Cultural Revolution.

I was telling one of my close friend the other day about how advanced and developed China is nowadays, well some part of China, compare to Malaysia. And that in some aspect, Chinese Gov is much better governing China, then Malaysian Gov governing Malaysia. In my friend's reply, he told me this, he believes that "Attitudes" of the people define if a society developed or not.

What is attitude anyway? have you ever really thought about it, why is it an ethnic group has the same attitude (almost) and this attitude can be so different from another ethnic group? -- In another word... "culture-shock"

In my humble opinion. It is all about culture.

I read a book by "Bo Yang" titled "The Ugly Chinese" -- 丑陋的中国人，柏杨 -- The book talks about how the 5000 years cultural history of China influence each and every dynasty in the history of China, and how it is still badly influencing and nurturing the new generation of Chinese. Now I am not going to talk about what the book says, but I wish to share my point of view on how culture and ethic believes and practices can shape the ethnic based attitude and eventually shaping the entire social-culture. And also acknowledging my friend's point of view.

Lets first define what is culture.

Culture -- All the knowledge and skills shared by a society.

Now, lets explore what this knowledge and skills are about. They are not your type of computer skills, or interview skills or flirting skills, nor they are your type of knowledge in Algebra or physics and economics. These are very localized knowledge and skills, which very much depends on the influence of geographical location and time specific. These are the knowledge and skills to survive in the area at a particular time. Why time? Because, there are too many entities that changes at different different time. So time (volcano eruption, earthquake, plague) too, influence a culture.

Something you do now, might be correct for now, at this moment. But it may not be entirely true in next 5 years or even 5 minutes; Something you learn now, might be correct for now, at this moment. But it may not be entirely right in the next 5 years or even 5 minutes. Like I say, there are too many things or entities that influence our way of doing things, and learning things.

Nothing is certain; nothing is permanent. What ever we learn now, is only good for now. Unless we keep on updating and learning new things, we will be left behind. And forgotten.

Then, why are we keep on fostering and protecting our "Culture"? Our culture is just a primitive skills and knowledge that kept our ancestor survive those harsh day. Culture does not fit out new modern scientific world.

If we keep on practicing what our ancestor do in history, what will become of us. Culture is a 2 ways knife, if not use carefully we may cut ourselves. There are some element in culture that are bad, like spitting. Look at China, people spitting everywhere. This is a fine example of culture translate into attitude of a person. Why? Because culture permit him to do so, and it becomes a habit, and habit shape his attitude. And you know what, attitude define a person. ----- people shape the society; the country. End of story.

There are, of course, good elements in culture. Those are the elements that we want to keep. Like courtesy, polite, patient... and etc.

Culture is a collection of habits and attitudes, rooted deep inside everyone's sub-conscious . To eradicate bad element from culture, is like getting rid of bad habit and and attitude from a person. There are equally hard and persistent.

Sometimes, I thinks that the cultural revolution started by Mao in China, was a good thing to China. Think about it, cleaning up all the bad elements in Chinese culture in 1 shot. But of course, the revolution went too wild and out of control. But how nice if it were to succeed. Only if.

Lastly, I define culture as ---
"a good way to call a collections of habits and attitude that the masses approved and refuse to change"

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