I have, very early in my life, realised the difference having a distinct culture makes in a group of people. Very obviously, in an informal setting, you do not set it out upon 2 slabs of stone.
Still articulating it, saying it out, defining the limits of what we do and what we do not do are very important in maintaining a cohesive, strong and focused group.
A very expansive instinctive imprecise semi-empirical discussion is found in Culture is Destiny: a conversation with Lee Kuan Yew.
I recall, being urged by the Singaporean government, as a youngster, to do well in mandarin and learn the chinese culture. Yet instead of the focus being on the language, I remember more vividly various speeches by the Singaporean government to pick up on the Chinese culture. Here, Chinese with a capital C, as in China, instead of the chinese worldwide ethnic group as a whole.
Many people were flabbergasted: we have here, an admittedly multi-racial country whose government were openly perennially concerned with racial harmony and has a often enforced Sedition Act, urging one ethnic group to focus on its culture?
People around me were stumped, some condemned the open message, some questioned the absurdness of learning how to write chinese calligraphy, tea ceremony, chinese poems and so on.
The truth is: Singaporeans are always Pragmatists. and so are our government. So it had never been about the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively as so eloquently put by the google definitions engine.
It had always been about connecting on a deeper consciousness with a group of people who were about to become the biggest significant population in the world.
