Agriculture means cultivation of the fields, of the countryside. Culture is synonymous with cultivation. Everything man does is part of culture. There are things that man has not made: animals and plants, the stars, and mountains: all of these are nature. But there are other things that would not exist if man had not appeared on earth: houses, songs, ceremonies, politics, automobiles. Everything that owes its existence to man is a form of culture.
There are other meanings of the word culture. For example: the set of things that certain men have created. This is how we speak of Mayan culture or Greek culture. And there is also a restricted form, according to which culture is what man has created not to fight against external forces (weapons, work tools, technical objects in general), but to allow for internal development (poetry, painting, music). In this sense, we will consider, for the moment, the term culture.
A dagger, a rifle, or a rocket serve to kill the enemy. But what is the purpose of a poem? A copse or a tractor serve to make the countryside productive for the benefit of humanity, but what is the purpose of a song? A bus serves to go see a play, but what is the purpose of a play? Well then: a poem, a song, a comedy serve to make man truly human, to help him abandon his most primitive aspects and refine his life. They serve to cultivate him. They serve, in short, to make him cultured. And by making him cultured, they free him from the shackles to which primitive man is bound. That primitive man believes that blind forces are always besieging him; he believes that everything must be resolved by blind violence; beyond the most elementary questions, he doesn't know what things are for or why he is on earth. He's like a beast. A cultured man frees himself from those shackles. That's why Martí said, "Being cultured is the only way to be free." Poetry refines a person's feelings, making them broader and more delicate. (...)
Painting allows us to see reality better, to observe things we hadn't noticed before. Ignorant people don't know they are surrounded by fascinating things, beautiful colors, lines of great joy. It's as if they were in the dark. They pass, glumly, beneath green, red, black, and violet trees, golden clouds, and soft gray stones. And then they go and hide sadly in their sad houses. A cultured person, whose eyes have been opened by painting, can daily enjoy a great festival that remains closed to the ignorant. Music is like another language, in which, without words, people of all countries say beautiful things to each other, sometimes profound, and at other times light and joyful. Through music, we speak all languages!
A play, by showing us a slice of life, helps us better understand our own. So does a movie or a novel. Reading novels, for example, is like having the opportunity to experience other lives and, above all, to understand our own.
All of this and much more constitutes culture in the last-mentioned sense. It constitutes the cultivation of a human being. Every human being carries within him, like a seed, the possibility of great development. But, like a seed, he requires cultivation for that development to take place. If a seed is thrown on a stone, a plant does not emerge. If a human being is not placed in appropriate conditions, he does not develop as a complete human being.
(...) The world will appear in all its splendor with justice alongside beauty. People will enrich their feelings, they will better perceive the colors, sounds, and shapes of things. They will have the feeling of getting the most out of life. That is culture. (Excerpts from notes on culture)
Photo: Illustration by Michel Moro
Taken from Granma
