Powers of Culture -- Connecting Culture with High Performance

Abstract

Research Questions -- Research Question 1: Why Bother with Culture: What gives culture enough power to be worth human attention, study, then research? Research Question 2: Iceberg Effects Shared By Culture, High Performance, & Selves: These share the same “iceberg effect” of repertoires of shared unconscious routines, made unconscious from original laborious conscious deliberate practice repetitions -- are these different or virtually the same phenomena and what does that tell us about what culture is? Research Question 3: Vastness Of Cultures: Concepts like “culture” that refer to everything human, all of civilization, every civilization, everything in every civilization, requires models of “culture” variables almost as vast as civilizations themselves -- what basis of focus in models of culture reduces that vastness without ignoring the true role of vastness as a reason we must attend to and respect and research culture?Method -- Phenomonology of Encountering Culture as Power: The reasons people end up being forced to respect and take culture into account are examined in some detail, revealing powers of culture from two sources, unconscious repertoires of routines as culture, and the vastness of culture. Neural net, artificial intelligence, knowledge management perspectives on conscious and unconscious knowledge, procedural and declarative knowledge, representational and non-representational memory are applied in this paper to produce a model of culture as the unconsciously imbibed contents in all people from dozens of contexts while growing up locally, or during intense work with a group. The unconsciousness of these contents and their vastness (we do not remember learning these things and so many things were learned) plus the missing meta-knowledge about all the alternative ways of being we did not learn and cannot imagine because we were never exposed to them (we are not aware of what alternative things we did not encounter and learn, we lack meta-knowledge of the knowledge we miss, and lack) give words like “culture” practical power to ruin human endeavors -- we fail to see bases of acting of ourselves and others -- and practical power to empower other endeavors -- automated routines outperform consciously labored ones. Tools to handle the unconsciousness of culture and its vastness are suggested (other articles develop and present them in detail).Result -- Tools For Handling Culture Powers: Careful distinctions result in 10 aspects to culture, with uses of culture being often confused in other research with definitions of it.Conclusion -- Culture, High Performances, Selves Are the Same: Large unconscious repertoires of routines produced by laborious conscious earlier practice. A new definition of culture is presented along with nine powers of culture that it implies. Other definitions of culture from the research literature are relegated to being uses, not definitions, of culture, in this article’s view. Origins of each power of culture are suggested but not proved herein. This article’s definition of culture (as unconsciously learned and automated routines from dozens of contexts while growing up or being socialized into groups) separates unseen contents (which are “culture”) from seen contents (which, rather than being “culture” are considered, in this article either theories of culture or merely tents of all ordinary disciplines of knowledge). Analysis of this definition shows that high performances are always just cultures and cultures are always just high performances.