Difference between Culture and Lifestyle
In this discussion, we shall delve on the difference between culture and lifestyle. Culture and lifestyle are always misunderstood to be the same but they are two entirely different concepts. However, culture and lifestyle are inter-related with each other that are also the basis in the study of human society.
Culture
Most of the experts have been amazed by the human conduct within diverse societies and have considered the cultures and lifestyles of people. Culture can be interpreted as the totality of thoughts, behavior, customs and practices of a variety of people.
Culture essentially refers to patterns of human pursuit and the illustrative structures that give such activities importance. Cultures can be also be interpreted as systems of symbols of group of persons that interact and compete with one each other.
Culture can be explained as the way of life which embraces beliefs, arts and institutions of a population that may be transferred from generation to generation.
Culture has been known as the way of life for the entire society. Fundamentally, it includes system of manners, dress, religion, rituals, language, art, norms of behavior, such as morality, and systems of belief.
Lifestyle
On the other hand, lifestyle can be interpreted as to how an individual live his own life, similarly or in different ways from the rest. Transforming one’s culture is not as easy as changing the lifestyle of a person.
Lifestyle is a personal choice based on culture. It describes how you live your life on a daily basis.
A person’s lifestyle often reveals his or her values, but not always. For example, a person who cares about being stylish might live an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
And a person who is interested in all that’s new and cool might have a very conservative political view.
Lifestyle is very much dependent on the geographical location as well as social upbringing. A person from a certain part of the world might have a specific type of lifestyle which differs from the one followed by people from other parts of the world.
Connection
The connection between these two concepts is that while culture circumscribes traditions, lifestyles, values, and other social aspects, a lifestyle, however, is affected by these components.
Lifestyle can be seen as an offshoot of culture. Culture provides the foundation for how society operates and its customs; lifestyle reflects the choices individuals make based on those customs.
The reason for this is that culture includes the non-tangible aspects of life such as values, beliefs and traditions while lifestyle reflects specific actions and choices.
There is a fine line between culture and lifestyle. While culture is more of a collective aspect of a particular society, whereas lifestyle is more individualistic and personal.
Both culture and lifestyle can be broken down into various components:
Culture: Religion, education, family, art and entertainment, and living conditions.
Lifestyle: Health and fitness, clothing, transportation, recreation activities, diet and food habits, social life.
How does culture affect lifestyle?
Our culture shapes the course of action of how we work and play in the society, and it makes an impact in how we view ourselves and other people. It affects our values, on what we consider what is right and what is wrong.
This is how the society we live in affecting our choices. However, our choices can also ascend others and eventually help mold our society.
For instance, you encounter a stranger walking across the street. How are you able to describe the person? What are the possible labels would you use?
We are all aware that everyone is different from one another in various ways. Yet when we come across others we often depend on generalizations to describe them. We shall see the world in accordance with the patterns in order to make sense of it.
Conversely, we will not be able to deal with the daily surge of people and objects in our midst, if we cannot predict a lot about them and discern that we know who and what they are based on patterns in our society.
How does popular culture affect one’s life?
With the development of social media, it has become quicker and easier to spread culture across the world transforming it into one global society. This has also seen the insight of pop culture into various aspects of society.
To appreciate the impact of pop culture, we need to understand what pop culture really is. The basic definition of pop culture is a modern popular culture passed via the mass media and the purpose of which is focusing particularly at younger people.
It has been well known across different surveys conducted that the young people are most influenced and are the most common consumers of pop culture.
Pop culture affects our society in various ways. It also helps people develop themselves into a person who is more considering and accepting the vast amount of representation throughout the numerous genres in pop cultures in our country.
How does a person experience culture in everyday life?
Culture plays a vital role to construct a society with group of people who follow similar values. Activities that group of people follow in their daily life are the outcome of impacts of culture.
People give importance to the culture, as culture conveys itself in the practices of lifestyle, religion, language, food and clothing. Principles of culture provides people understanding about behaving in a manner that would depend on the different situations in life.
The values of culture let the people understand how culture affects one’s lifestyle, and behaviors. Cultural values also affects people’s insight of viewing the society and the world.
The cultural surrounding around everyone develops their personalities and transforms their viewpoint in their lives. The way that people take part with the cultural values influences people’s behavior.
The personality of the people changes as the impact of culture develops different insights and perception.
How does culture influence behavior?
Culture is a perspective about behaviors, ethics and values of the people within a society. The culture in which we are a part of creates an impact to our identity and to our beliefs as regards to nature of life.
There are two kinds of culture—Individualistic and Collective culture. All types of culture have a point of Individualistic and Collectivistic beliefs, but it is considered as Individualistic culture when the value of it is more on extroverted.
Individualistic cultures make people to be more open to the society than that of Collectivistic cultures. Collectivistic culture on the other hand gives more emphasis to a introverted personality style and motivate behaviors that represents the majority of people.
Collectivistic cultures are best at seeing other people’s insight to promote harmony. When the majority of the population encourages these sociable behaviors, more ideas are exchanged and develops and self-esteem increases from time to time.
How does cultural interpretation affect a person?
Culture affects the person because it also upholds certain religious beliefs and any other beliefs to a person. Some countries are principally Roman Catholic while other countries may believe other religions such as Muslim, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu.
Every religion conveys its own set of standards that affects the personal conduct of a person. For instance, the cultures of these religions limit the choices of people in picking a profession, a husband or a wife, the roles of women and the behavior of the member of such religion.
Some cultures promote close physical presence when in a conversation with someone, while other cultures encourage loud, or even argumentative verbal communication, and some culture only fosters soft-spoken and polite conversation with one another.
How does culture shape our morals?
Every culture has its own insight as regards to the moral behavior. A behavior may be good in some culture but it may also be bad in the other. For example, the act of burping in front of your friends or other people.
Burping is considered as unpleasant behavior based on some cultures. However, in other cultures such as in some parts of middle east, burping after eating a meal can be a sign of appreciation and satisfaction from that meal.
Therefore, there can be various and contradicting cultural behaviors which shape our moral behavior.
Although we all have our moral compass, culture affects it and moral values would depend to the norm or cultures we lived in.
Another example, lying and cheating may be wrong to our moral compass but to other cultures, they are allowed.
Morals are fundamentally a function and outcome of culture. All of us have a moral compass which is initially determined by the mix of cultures to which we are exposed to.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Culture and lifestyle are entirely different but inter-related with each other. Culture is a complex whole that shapes customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of social group, religious, or race.
Lifestyle on the other hand is the manner on how a certain individual live. We can consider that lifestyle is a component of culture. Additionally, the lifestyle of an individual is always influenced by his culture.
Moreover, culture always changes from time to time and there are many things that affects its changes. It does not necessarily remain static. In other words, lifestyle is a way of living which embraces the interests, behaviors, needs, motives, wants, feelings, and behavioral orientations of an individual or persons.