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Overview
Of all the possible definitions of human culture, the key empirical characteristic of this phenomena is that it is the shared patterning of human beings, in socio-environmental context, that permits the symbolic and behavioral response of people in adaptive and socially coordinant ways. It also permits and promotes a symbolic consonance of world with worldview, and an alignment of the objective world with the subjective comprehension of the world.
Hollywood and Bollywood have perhaps served to induce transculturation and sharing of implicit culture across the oceans more than any other single set of phenomena in the world, excepting of course the broadcast media and communications industry that is the extension of the Hollywood and Bollywood film industries. While it is done primarily in a fictional and mythical form, it has permitted the fostering of a common, if not collective, imagination of possible worlds. National media, or communications media controlled or constrained by national governments or other ethno-political interests, have been very effective in the manipulation, mobilization and organization of cultural identity, cultural resources, and shared patterns of response to events in the world. They have served to systematically shape collective opinion and worldview of groups in ways that promote what can be called a sense of ethno-national unity.
Ideally, the proposition of human metaculture that we would like to see realized is the pan-human achievement of a common platform of cultural integration that transcends many ethnocultural differentials and overcomes existing or possible communal cleavages that separate people on earth. It is evident that even more than the celebration of diversity, we need the cultural unification and integration of humanity within a common shared framework. This integration can only really be achieved under a structural umbrella of global metasystemic integration that provides for most people a realistic framework for their achievement of a better life in the world.
The proposition of human metaculture, of its realization, stands as an uncertain consequence of human social and cultural development. It is clearly apparent that human cultural adaptation, articulation and integration proceeds on multiple levels simultaneously, and as human systems grow together and become larger, so also does the complexity of the processes of human culturation increase in proportion. Ethnocultural differentials can serve to separate people, sometimes antagonistically, at one level, when other factors of integration serve at the same time to bring those people closer together within the overall framework of the active metasystem that they are situated within. These differences are more often than not seized upon and exaggerated by political interests who seek thereby to dominate and control resources and to foster conflict and resistance of change.
The links to the primary portals of this framework are found below:
