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Introduction.
If you want to defeat the enemy, raise his children.
Eastern wisdom.
When thinking about culture, spirituality, and morality, a modern educated person often uses the concept of “Russian cultural code.” V.I. Dahl’s dictionary says that “code is a secret, secret writing, riddle, secret, cipher.” American psychoanalyst Clotaire Rapaille writes in his book “The Cultural Code”: “The cultural code is the cultural unconscious. It defines a set of images that are associated with a concept in our minds. This is not something that we say or are clearly aware of, but something that is hidden even from our own understanding, but is manifested in our actions.”
To each educated person It is known that culture is the life of a people, its soul, its mind and heart, its past, present and future. Based on any national culture lies the principle of nationality, and no people exists outside of their culture. The main purpose of national culture is to resist the degeneration of any people. The destruction of culture is the destruction of a nation. Our enemy now is ourselves, in many ways the way of life of a family preoccupied with material problems. Therefore, the education of spiritual, moral culture Children, in my opinion, are the main task of society.
Since the study of the cultural code remains one of the main keys to understanding the essence of society and the individual person in it, and also has a great influence on the formation of a person, I decided to try to formulate for myself the concept of the “cultural code of modern teenagers”, to try to see the mind and heart, the past , the present and future of my peers, especially since the relevance of the topic is due to the insufficient degree of study of the problem during for long years development of society. Thus, fundamental issue(problem) of the study becomes the problem of the formation of a cultural code in the interpersonal relationships of modern teenagers.
Project type: research, informative, creative.
Hypothesis works: morality is one of the most important components of the cultural code of modern teenage society.
Target work: to understand the issue of forming the morality of schoolchildren as the main component of the cultural code of modern teenagers using the example of V. Zheleznikov’s story “Scarecrow” and the film of the same name by R. Bykov.
Tasks research:
Analyze the problem of forming a cultural code.
Study the concept of “morality” as a component of the cultural code.
To compare the viewer’s and reader’s perception of the problem of morality in the school community using the example of V. Zheleznikov’s story and R. Bykov’s film “Scarecrow”.
To substantiate the importance of mutual respect and mutual assistance in the interpersonal relationships of adolescents.
Having systematized the collected information, formulate the concept of “cultural code of modern teenagers.”
Methods research:
theoretical - analysis of printed publications, dictionaries, Internet resources on the research topic;
empirical - own observations.
An object research is the cultural code of modern teenagers.
Item research - the formation of schoolchildren's morality as the main component of the cultural code of modern adolescents.
Practical significance of the project:
Disclosure of the concepts of “morality” and “cultural code” in modern society.
Developing interest in the world of cinema and books.
Education of moral ideals.
Attracting the attention of teenagers to the problem and the desire to participate in the discussion.
The main sources for writing the work were journal articles and reviews, reviews, critical articles, found by me on the Internet. There was very little literature on the issue raised, and the Internet resources available to me and my peers made it possible to analyze the positions of contemporaries.
The cultural code is an unsolved problem of the 20th century.
One of the unresolved problems of the twentieth century
is that we still have a vague and biased idea of what exactly makes Japan
the country of the Japanese, the USA the country of the Americans,
France is the country of the French, and Russia is the country of the Russians...
The lack of this knowledge prevents countries from understanding each other.
Ruth Benedict. Chrysanthemum and sword
Man differs from all other living beings inhabiting the Earth, first of all, in that he masters nature, transforms it and creates culture - the creation of his mind, soul and hands. Over the course of centuries, many generations of people create the language of the people, their writing, literature, monuments of art and architecture, form customs and traditions, and form a cultural code.
The captured image and code are like a lock and a code for it. Knowing the sequence of numbers and letters, you can open the lock. Deciphering a wide range of impressions is of great importance. This helps us answer one of the most important questions for us: what makes us act this way and not otherwise? Understanding cultural codes provides us with a wonderful new tool, a kind of new lens through which we can examine ourselves and our behavior. It turns our understanding of the world upside down, changes our views on everything around us. Moreover, it confirms a truth we have always intuitively felt: despite our common human nature, people different countries really very different. According to Clotaire Rapaille, cultural codes help to understand this difference.
Thus, the study of the cultural code remains one of the main keys to understanding the essence of both an individual person and the nation as a whole through cultural heritage our ancestors as a single national system, which has a great influence on the formation of man.
No nation exists outside its culture. The destruction of culture inevitably leads to the destruction of a nation. That is why, after the destruction of the USSR, the main destructive blow fell on Russian culture. Particular attention was paid to young people, who, instead of traditional culture, were actively promoted and introduced into their consciousness by someone else’s subculture. Thus, Russia’s enemies tried to interfere in the “cultural unconscious” of its nation, changing the cultural code.
Cartoon characters for children include Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, Cats that look like Hares, and Monster Dolls. The heroes of teenagers were singers, actors, bloggers, stand-up comedians (“cool” guys with tattoos and glamorous girls with artificial appearance and dubious ideals). The heroes of student and working youth are representatives of large American IT business (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg) and representatives of the Russian oligarchic elite. If we compare the cultural images of modern times with the cultural images of the USSR, we get the following. kids Soviet Union dreamed of the ideals of pioneers, Timurites, the kind Cat Leopold and friendly cartoon characters - animals. Soviet teenagers - Komsomol members, heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Working youth looked up to Stakhanovites, heroes of labor (doctors, teachers, engineers, agricultural workers).
Of course, Russian culture is powerful enough to absorb various cultural changes and additions, but if Russian children are raised as heroes of the United States, then the main goal of changing the cultural code (core) has been accomplished. And in the first decades the consequences may not be visible, but they will definitely be there. What could be the consequences? The historian, president of the Community of Young Scientists, Igor Vlasenko, answers this question in his article.
Individualism is formed in children (superheroes are mostly loners), egoism (a superhero is always right, you can use any means to achieve your goal), competition (superheroes are not only not ideal, but are often immoral in life and compete with others). The tendency towards clipped thinking is increasing (teenagers cannot concentrate on one thing or think in systemic and strategic categories), their own creative thinking is developing worse (any information can be found on the Internet), the result of uncontrolled access to information is unhindered access to obscene and immoral ideas.
Does this behavior of modern children and adolescents differ from the principles of Soviet youth: systematic thinking, formed from books and scientific and educational magazines, the ability to work in a team (the notorious collectivism), as well as the focus of information on social important aspects society, scientific achievements, active participation in the life of the class, school, team, society? I think definitely.
The historian also believes that the cultural core should be based on analytical, systemic and project thinking. A young person must ask questions: “Who?”, “For what purpose?”, “With what tools?” - understand when he is influenced and how to avoid manipulation of his feelings, beliefs and actions.
As for modern Russia, we now see an understanding among the top leadership of the state that without preserving Russian culture, without educating young people and understanding what kind of future society is heading towards, without all this it is impossible to build a creative, positively developing country.
Since 2006, Russia has systematically dedicated every year to one of the important cultural and semantic significant directions in the life of society. 2006 was declared the Year of Academician Dmitry Likhachev, 2007 - the Year of the Russian Language, 2008 - the Year of the Family, 2009 - the Year of Youth, 2010 - the Year of the Teacher, 2011 - the Year of Russian Cosmonautics, 2012 - the Year of Russian history, 2013 - Year of Environmental Protection, 2014 - Year of Culture, 2015 - Year of Russian Literature, 2016 - Year of Cinema. If you pay attention, this series has a deep basis, as it expresses the key foundations of the culture of Russian civilization and the values of the Russian people. It is precisely in the difficulty of combining Russian morality and goodness, kindness, cohesion, patience and acceptance of egoism and individualism, alien to us, callousness, disruptive rudeness that lies the problem of the Russian cultural code, unresolved in the 20th century and so relevant today.
Morality as the main component of the cultural code.
If we consider the concept of “cultural code” as a set of important cultural components, then perhaps the most important components are spirituality and morality.
In modern society, the problem of youth morality is one of the main ones, because, no matter how banal it may sound, the future belongs to young people. But “the present century” and the “past century” are always in contradiction. What seems necessary to those with gray hairs sounds stupid and funny to young people. But why does it seem to us that the older generation is always wrong? Probably because the sense of responsibility is not so strongly developed in today's youth, or it has not yet been deeply rooted in young souls. When you are fifteen years old, it seems that your whole life is ahead of you and there is still a lot of time ahead to correct your possible mistakes. The process of formation of modern Russian youth took place and is taking place in the conditions of breaking down the “old” values of the Soviet period and the formation of a new system of values and social relations.
Where are Russian youth going? What values and attitudes do young people enter into life with? With what spiritual baggage will they overcome the problems of their future adult life? And what needs to be done to change the current situation for the better?
D.S. Likhachev in “Letters about the Good and the Beautiful” reflects on the values of life. “It’s stuffy in the house, stuffy in the moral life. One should thoroughly “exhale” all petty worries, all the vanity of everyday life, get rid of, shake off everything that hinders the movement of thought, that crushes the soul, not allowing a person to accept life, its values, its beauty... One must be open people, tolerant of people, look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, simply good, “overshadowed beauty” enriches a person spiritually.” I cannot but agree with Likhachev’s opinion. Only a person open to the good and beautiful is able to see and accept this good and beautiful.
Modern youth need to cultivate an understanding of “beautiful” and “eternal”. No matter how pessimistic our teachers may be about their careless students, we are not yet lost. We need something to capture our minds and point us in the right direction. We need shining example. I think literature is the first of these examples, the most deeply moral and pure.
Literature is one of the most complex intellectual art forms, since perception literary work is indirect in nature, created with the help of words, language. A person receives more pleasure from artistic images, the more vivid the ideas that arise in him during the reading process. And the images inhabiting it cannot be touched, seen, or heard. They come to life in our imagination as we read, and then remain in our memory.
Yes, today schoolchildren are attracted by the high speed of information transfer. Does this mean that reading books is becoming a thing of the past? No. Anyone my age who wants to be successful knows that it’s not the best way for the development of intelligence than reading. And those who understand that a book is the best path to the development of spirituality also know how to choose the direction of this path for themselves.
The past 2015, declared the Year of Literature, presented young people with many interesting projects that encourage children and teenagers to read. My peers and I enjoyed following the “Get Reading” project on social networks. I know guys who are actively involved in sports, and such “advertising” of reading became understandable and effective for them, they looked at reading from a different perspective.
Previously, our country was considered the most reading country in the world. All nations envied the intellectual potential of Soviet youth, who strived for knowledge. What about today's youth? Reading! There is evidence of this. I see this in class, on the subway, on vacation. There’s just less of it, which means families and schools have something to work on.
A person with his unique inner world, his attitude to good and evil, to the search for the meaning of life always has a choice and bears responsibility for it. Whatever literary genre the work belongs to, the author always puts into it his vision of the world, problems, his feelings, and features of the era about which he writes. Why does he transfer all the most valuable things to the paper? He shares his values with the Reader. A reader who is also looking for the meaning of life, feels, experiences, has his own inner world and is in the process of developing his personality. The moment when feelings, which the writer put into his work, coincided with the reader's feelings, it turns out resonance effect. The reader becomes a participant in everything that the writer experienced and felt. “All the strings that the author has are in the hearts of the readers. The author has no other strings. And depending on the quality of playing on these strings, they resonate in people’s souls, sometimes dully, sometimes loudly, sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly,” said S. Marshak.
Vladimir Zheleznikov, the author of the story about the moral conflict “Scarecrow,” became for me exactly such a musician, playing on the strings of my soul. Our feelings coincided. Resonance effect on the face. I first read the story three years ago. Later I watched the film of the same name by Rolan Bykov. Zheleznikov and Bykov, in a symphony of emotions, feelings, torments of the heroes of the work, conveyed to the reader and viewer that very deep spiritual meaning, turned to the “Golden Rule of Morality,” which we memorized in social studies lessons: “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” And, in my opinion, they thereby raised the problem of the formation of morality, the cultural code of teenagers of their time, a problem no less relevant in the 21st century.
Morality of teenagers of the 20th century. Analysis of the audience and reader's perception of V. Zheleznikov's story “Scarecrow” and the film of the same name by R. Bykov.
Where to start... From the beginning... From what emotions visited me when reading the book... My hands were shaking. Thoughts swarmed and got confused. I was confused. You can think about this book endlessly, you can draw many conclusions, you can learn to live from it. It's amazing how accurately the author conveyed the enormous world problem- cruelty among teenagers, described it in all its manifestations. So, it’s not only today in our schools that children beat their friends and bully them for no reason? So this was also during my parents’ childhood?
“The most cruel creatures in the world are children. Their willingness to kill and abuse is unparalleled."- said Salvador Dali. It seems that Vladimir Karpovich Zheleznikov wrote the story as a decoding of the “Dali code”. “To abuse is to subject someone to insulting mockery,” says Ushakov’s explanatory dictionary. And, it should be noted, Lena Bessoltseva endured a lot of bullying. In this case, Zheleznikov understands the word “kill” as moral murder, not physical murder. The guys from the class are trying to kill Lena’s self-confidence and hope. But she doesn’t give up, and one day we hear the phrase from her: “You have to believe until the end!”
In literature class we were told that the story had a great resonance in society. The Soviet reader refused to believe that children could humiliate and insult, and despise their comrade. For what? For purity, spirituality, good manners, dedication.
Have my peers ever wondered how radically a person can change under the influence of others? What can immoral stereotypes do to people? I think it’s as shallow as I was before reading this wonderful book. I was struck by the dramatic changes that took place in Dimka Somov, who from a strong and courageous boy turns into a cowardly person incapable of action. At the end of the story, Dimka turns from Lena’s “friend” into an immoral, cruel traitor.
V.L. Razumnevich, in the introductory article to the book “Scarecrow,” also reflects on morality. “Sharp, in places even heated to the point of deep tragedy, the story “Scarecrow” warns the young reader against hasty judgments about one or another member of the team, and teaches a careful, sensitive attitude towards each person. The writer condemns cruelty and unprincipledness, callousness and callousness, and resolutely defends the high moral laws of human nobility and compassion, and a chivalrous attitude towards people.
“And longing, such a desperate longing for human purity, for selfless courage and nobility, increasingly captured their hearts and demanded a way out,”- the author says at the end of the story about his young heroes, for whom the events described in the book served as a serious moral lesson for life."
The book is useful for everyone. Both adults and children, and especially teenagers. She teaches us to be tolerant, honest, strong in spirit, noble, merciful, and most importantly - teaches to value the moral, moral. “But your eyes are inspired! And the heart is pure. It’s stronger than a dress that fits your figure.”.
We were lucky. We are as lucky as readers can be who, after reading it, also have the pleasure of seeing a magnificent film adaptation of a work. I'm talking about the film by Rolan Bykov based on the script by Vladimir Zheleznikov. Despite the fact that the film was released in a small print run, it was watched by almost 34 million viewers. In this film, “Scarecrow” broke the record of the main hit, released in the same 1984 - “Love and Doves” by Vladimir Menshov.
The plot of the film follows the book almost exactly the same, with the exception of some characters and plot actions. Many critical articles have been released about this film. But for those who watched the film simply, humanly worrying about the characters, the performance of Kristina Orbakaite (Lena Bessoltseva) and Yuri Nikulin (Lena’s grandfather) is beyond doubt and beyond criticism. I looked and believed that such an honest and decent person could raise this girl according to the laws of goodness. The actors felt and played defenselessness so much that it was as if I missed all their experiences through myself. A lump came to my throat when Lena said that you can’t run from the crowd.
I don’t know what “good directing” means, but I can definitely say that Rolan Bykov, little known to my generation, is a master of his craft. This film makes an even more poignant impression than the book.
The film caused a real explosion among the Soviet film audience of that time, which was divided into two sides: some demanded that the film be destroyed, since it “disgraced the honor of Soviet children,” others, on the contrary, praised Bykov for such audacity and argued that this is exactly what the pioneers had come to. organization for 60 years of existence.
After watching this movie, I realized that cruelty has always been and is near me today. I realized that during the disunity of our time, cruelty becomes a quality of the majority. But people who understand what it means to be a worthy person good friend, people who know how to be merciful are among us. They do not consider kindness and naivety to be eccentricities. They are endowed with a sense of self-awareness, pride and fortitude. I saw such people in the characters of “Scarecrow” and realized that they were among my friends. Which means I am a happy person!
The film crew was rightfully rewarded for their work. In 1986 the film received State Prize USSR and Grand Prize at the International Film Festival for Young People in Laon. In 1987 - the main prize of the All-European Film Festival of Children's and Youth Cinema in Vichy (prizes for directing and best actress).
This is probably the same Soviet cinema that, in the opinion of the older generation, revives morality human personality. This is probably the film that should be shown to my peers, despite the fact that it was filmed in the early eighties and seems out of date. It is modern, like the story, and it will always be so, because moral problems are eternal. Bravo, Zheleznikov! Bravo, Bykov!
The cultural code of modern teenagers.
As a result of analyzing various sources and articles by authors studying the problem raised in our study, we came across an idea that runs like a red thread in all publications: the idea of intensifying the struggle not only for the division of world space, but also the struggle for spiritual influence. Obviously, the second tendency is most often found in educational institutions, in particular in schools. In fact, the school is the primary broadcasting tool cultural values, norms and ideals, and it makes no sense to deny the strong relationship between culture and education.
That is why, in my opinion, the concept of the cultural code of modern teenagers is also formed within the walls of school, and above all in literature lessons. Lessons that give us the opportunity to become involved in the destinies of heroes with whom generations of our fathers and grandfathers empathized. Lessons that teach us to understand and love poetry and prose. Lessons in which we plunge into the world of beauty and harmony fiction. Lessons that make us receptive to “emotional-value, spiritual-moral development and civic education.” Lessons in which we are taught to compare the viewer’s and reader’s perception of a work and draw conclusions.
I think that the cultural code for us today is what gives incredible freedom to understand the reasons for our own actions, what helps us navigate the world, this is our new vision, a kind of “glasses” through which the world is seen in a new way, this is , which helps us develop spiritually, be tolerant and kind to people. After all, the most valuable thing in life is kindness, and at the same time, smart, purposeful kindness.
Intelligent kindness is the most valuable thing in a person, the most attractive to him and, ultimately, the most faithful on the path to personal happiness. Happiness is achieved by those who strive to make others happy. Knowing this, remembering this always and following the paths of kindness is very, very important.
School will always remain an arena of struggle for spiritual development. Only the fighters and their ideas will change. But at the same time, the school will always depend on the state. It is the state that decides whether we, teenagers of the 21st century, will watch the films of the incorrigible idealist Bykov, who gives each of his heroes a chance for correction, or the black stuff about the crippled destinies and morally degenerate people of the “fashionable” Valeria Gai Germanika. And it is the state that decides what books we will read and what our cultural code will be.
Conclusion
Based on the study of the subject and object of research, we can conclude that morality is indeed one of the most important components of the cultural code of modern teenage society. Thus, the research hypothesis is confirmed.
The goal of the work - to understand the issue of forming the morality of schoolchildren as the main component of the cultural code of modern teenagers using the example of V. Zheleznikov’s story “Scarecrow” and the film of the same name by R. Bykov - has been achieved. The study showed that this book is useful for everyone: adults and children, and especially teenagers. It teaches us to be tolerant, honest, strong-willed, noble, merciful, and most importantly, it teaches us to value what is moral and ethical. And Rolan Bykov’s film is the kind of film that should be shown to modern teenagers, despite the fact that it was filmed in the early eighties and seems out of date. It is modern, like the story, and it will always be so, because moral problems are eternal.
The research objectives have been solved. Systematization of the collected information made it possible to formulate the concept of a cultural code. In our opinion, the cultural code of modern teenagers is what gives incredible freedom to understand the reasons for our own actions, what helps us navigate the world, this is our new vision, a kind of “glasses” through which the world is seen in a new way, this is what , which helps us develop spiritually, be tolerant and kind to people.
Summing up, we can conclude about the practical significance of the project: the results of the study can attract the attention of teenagers to reading and meaningfully watching movies, and will also make them think about what they are like, what their cultural level is and whether the “glasses” of the modern cultural code suit them. The authors can only believe: to the face, undoubtedly.
Bibliography.
Vlasenko I. Article “Information society: modern youth and cultural code.” Electronic magazine “Our Youth”.
Dal V.I. Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. Modern version. - M.: ZAO Publishing House EKSMO-Press, 1999.
Danilyuk A.Ya., Kondakov A.M., Tishkov V.A. “The concept of spiritual and moral development and education of the personality of a Russian citizen”
Zharikova T. Article “Russian cultural code”. Electronic magazine “Our Youth”.
Clotaire Rapaille "Cultural Code". Electronic library bookcafe.net
Likhachev D.S. Letters about the good and the beautiful. M.: Publishing House "Children's Literature", 1985.
Pedagogy of text. Cultural code/t of the era. Collection of materials of the III scientific and practical conference “Open Education. Pedagogy of text", St. Petersburg, 2011.
Razumnevich V.L. With a book on life. M.: Education, 1986.
Scarecrow: a story / Vladimir Zheleznikov. M.: Children's literature, 2012.
Ways of transmitting social experience are called cultural codes. A cultural code is a way of transmitting knowledge about the world, skills, and abilities in a given cultural era. The very concept of “code” first appeared in communications technology, computer technology, cybernetics, mathematics, and genetics. Without coding, it is impossible to build artificial languages, machine translation, encryption and decryption of texts. In the theory of culture, the plan of content and understanding of cultural texts comes first, which is why the concept of “culture code” becomes so relevant and requires clarification. The need for a cultural code arises when there is a transition from the world of signals to the world of meaning. The world of signals is a world of discrete units that are calculated in bits of information, and the world of meaning is those meaningful forms that connect a person with the world of ideas, images and values of a given culture. In other words, code is a model, rules for generating a number of specific messages. All codes can be compared with each other on the basis of a common code, which is simpler and more comprehensive. A message, a cultural text, can open up to different readings depending on the code used. The code allows one to penetrate to the semantic level of culture; without knowledge of the code, the cultural text will be closed, incomprehensible, and not perceived. A person will see a system of signs, and not a system of meanings and meanings.
The main culture code must have the following characteristics:
- 1) self-sufficiency for the production, transmission and preservation of human culture;
- 2) openness to change;
- 3) versatility.
In accordance with M. McLuhan's classification of cultural types, codes of preliterate cultures, codes of written cultures, and codes of screen cultures are distinguished. Preliterate culture covers a huge “prehistoric” period, including “savagery” and “barbarism” (in the terminology of L. Morgan and E.B. Taylor). In preliterate cultures, the dominant cultural code was mythological. IN primitive society myth is not only a way of understanding life, but also a way of experiencing it, both in objective and symbolic forms.
Codes of written cultures were formed from the end of the 4th to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. (Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia) and exist to this day. These codes have historically specific and varied forms in various local cultures. There are a huge number of such forms, and it is required big job to identify and describe the cultural codes of local cultures. Of fundamental importance when characterizing the codes of written cultures is the proposition that under the influence of social transformations, the mythological cultural code with its identity of objectivity, signification and ideality is destroyed, and each of these parameters takes the form of independent functioning and is carried out by various social groups. History is included in the cultural code. Thus, the past, ancient and recent, becomes side by side, making up the events of the life of one people, which are connected as firmly into a single meaningful whole as this period is connected with its Gods or the One God. The change and restructuring of this cultural code begins in Christian Europe in the second half of the 15th century and is associated with the invention of printing. Printed book circulation opened up new opportunities for mastering the ongoing social changes in the code of cultural memory. Science had a significant influence on the formation of a new cultural code. Its result - reliable, experimentally verifiable, rational knowledge was introduced into the mechanism of cultural memory and rebuilt it. In the 17th-19th centuries. signs as a fact, a scientific theory, a method of practical transformation of nature, including human nature, form the basis of the cultural code of Western Europe. In the 20th century, screen culture codes began to form, organizing the interaction of the main components of the cultural code in a new way.
Objectivity, which in past cultural types was aimed at mastering nature, is almost completely confined to “secondary objectivity” - computers, Information Systems connections, information banks, etc. Iconicity also significantly expands the scope of its action: a word, model, symbol on the screen are implemented in a new way, giving scope creative activity in search of a sign-image.
The ideality formed by screen culture is also significantly updated. New thinking is characterized by the “fusion” of logical and figurative, the synthesis of conceptual and visual, the formation of “intellectual imagery” and sensory modeling.
Our knowledge of a culture's past comes from a variety of sources. The historical boundary separating the cultural ancient world from the beginning of human civilization, is determined by researchers by the emergence of new sources providing information about culture - written ones. This does not mean that the culture of the preliterate stage is less interesting. The point is that the possibilities of understanding it are based on other documents: oral, folklore traditions, household items, hunting or other vital important activities, rituals and ceremonies, type of home, cult and much more. This evidence remains significant in written cultures, which have preserved themselves in history in a fundamentally new way - through written text.
What is writing as a cultural phenomenon? What role does the written word play in historical retrospective cultures? What opportunities does writing open to culture and what limitations does it place on its development?
Answering these questions is largely an attempt to understand the current situation, when book culture, which formed the core of written cultures, is gradually losing ground to new ways of self-organization of culture, namely those that ensure the operation of computers, TV, cinema and video. Experts call this modern culture “ on-screen”, which differs in many of its parameters from the now becoming traditional book culture.
So, according to the methods of self-organization of culture that have developed in history, we can distinguish three global cultural types:
preliterate, sometimes called traditional;
writing, the basis of which is bookishness;
screen, which is today in a state of formation.
It is obvious that all the diversity of cultures that have taken place in history, belonging to the same type noted here, has other reasons:
different geography of spaces in which certain cultures were localized;
peculiarity of the societies that have developed in these territories.
The latter are characterized by the type of economy (forms of ownership, division of labor, tax and financial system, trade, etc.), types of power, organization of life, worship, social structure. They seem to “socialize” the basic cultural code. The variety of geographical and social parameters, on the one hand, superimposed on culture, and on the other, mastered by it, leads to the formation of specific historical types of culture, which in the literature are also called local types.
In the philosophy of history and culture, their originality was explained in different ways: by the “special spirit” of a particular culture (F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler), its “archetype” (K. Jung), the special “soil” of a culture (domestic Slavophiles). The irrationally understood basis on which these concepts are built also forms its own methods of analysis: “getting used to” each cultural type, its intuitive feeling, akin to artistic inspiration. The rational tradition, on the contrary, emphasized the idea of the cultural unity of humanity, which was also interpreted in different ways. Hegel believed that it lies in the Absolute Spirit, which, in its movement towards freedom, successively leaves the cultural world of the East, the Greco-Roman world, and finally finds freedom in the German world. The Marxist idea of the movement of history as a change in socio-economic formations served as the basis for Marxist cultural studies to completely identify types of societies with types of cultures. The concept of K. Jaspers, who considers the historical period from 800 to 200 AD, is very close to the rational basis for the unity of cultures in history. BC. "axial time of cultural revolution", which combined transformations in the most different cultures: Mediterranean, Middle East, Western Asia, China and India. Moving away from this axial time, cultures acquired their uniqueness, West and East moved away from each other.
C. Lévi-Strauss and his followers, cultural structuralists, defend the idea structural the unity of culture, which is proven through semiotic analysis of cultural texts - ritual, cult, rites. This school develops a system of semiotic codes (invariants) that clarify various cultural phenomena(options). The relationship between invariants and options provides an explanation for cultural diversity when found united mechanism.
There are many theories about how the unity and diversity of cultures is created, and this is not the place to highlight one of many. Let us set ourselves other tasks: to understand what culture is in its unity and diversity of types through cultural codes developed as ways of its self-organization, we will try to find the most General characteristics cultural codes of the three types of cultures we have noted.
Basic cultural code. The basic code of culture has the following characteristics: firstly, it is universal, and, therefore, works in any cultural type and any historical time; secondly, he self-sufficient for the formation and preservation of human culture; thirdly, he open to change, the self-generation of new cultural codes, as well as secondary ones - in their connection with the structures of social codes.
The existence of a basic cultural code is determined by three parameters according to which culture self-organizes in nature. This - objectivity, iconicity And ideality, and it is important to emphasize their genetic and ontological relationship.
Objectivity as a component of the cultural code, it designates a class of non-natural objects in the natural world. Their unnaturalness (what is called “second nature”, an “artificial” environment in contrast to the natural one) became obvious only at a certain level of cultural development, when man discovered the ability to creation something that does not exist in nature at all (bow, arrow, baskets, dwellings, etc.), to imitation nature (making fire) or changing it (domestication). But even in the very early stages anthroposociogenesis objectivity existed in the emerging cultural code. In the simplest Paleolithic tools (stone strikers, flint knives, microliths), minimally, but purposefully processed, a mechanism of interaction with the environment that was not characteristic of nature was laid down. The isolation from nature of things useful for the life of primitive people - stone tools - was accompanied by the formation of skills in their simple processing, use and, what is especially important, maintaining the acquired experience. Objectivity from the very beginning needed something different from what nature had, not genetic, inherent in it, but something independent of it. memory mechanism. And this mechanism was formed simultaneously with objectivity, it was actually contained in the simplest tools, contained in their very form, “suggesting” the nature of use and ease of handling the item, V their material, “reassuring” the user about the strength of the weapon. The object thus became a sign of purposeful action.
It is important to further understand that objectivity identical to iconicity in the emerging cultural code, is not as simple and unambiguous as it seems at first glance. Researchers of primitive cultures show that objectivity did not manifest itself in a single, random form and tool for all occasions, but was formed into holistic complexes, complex in composition and purpose. For example, in a complex of stone tools found at one of the sites of the Pittsburgh culture ( South Africa, 40 thousand years ago), stone flakes of four types, side and end scrapers of five types, spheroids, scaly tools, “anvils”, etc. were discovered. Thus, the tool complexes formed sign complexes, which, in turn, needed sign ordering. Both those and others had to find their place in the natural elements, to which primitive man was completely subordinate.
Primitive people faced the problem of how to connect objects of different origins: natural - with their rainfalls, floods, glaciers, fires and other elements that constantly threatened people, as well as the earth, animals, reservoirs that fed and watered them - and complexes of tools -signs that help them and protect them. Of course, the task so formulated is modernization and, of course, primitive people in their daily worries and did not know about her. However, for the survival of culture in its instrumental-sign form, in confrontation with the forces of nature, it was necessary to find, “invent”, “open” a space that would belong to culture, but in which objectivity and naturalness would have the opportunity for cultural interaction. Such a cultural field has become language, which was both a means and a material, the third component of the main cultural code - its ideality, having not only a natural, but also a symbolic nature.
The formation of society with its simplest forms of tribal life, emerging from the primitive herd, also changed the methods of communication, distinguishing them from natural communication (the first signaling system). Second signaling system, as a form of cultural communication, was built on the tool-sign activity of man. Tribal life of naturally formed groups mediated objective human activity (carried out “by means”, “through”, “thanks to” an instrument-sign) and mediated this very objectivity - the folding cultural environment. Both society and objectivity have distanced man from nature. Through language, as a sign system, culture “on its own territory” tried to establish contact with nature and society. In the linguistic field of culture there was no difference between objectivity and natural phenomenon: “stick”, “bow”, “axe”, and “stone” were given “names” (signs) in exactly the same way as “tree”, “water” or “thunder”. Moreover, clans, leaders and simply members of the clan began to receive names (totems).
The iconicity of the weapon associated with manual activity man, becomes a prerequisite for new forms of significant activity(ritual, cult, magic, witchcraft, myth). Natural language (speech), languages of ritual, cult and other languages of sign activity keep the field of culture ready to identify meanings or, in other words, values that allow a person to master both nature and society, thereby expanding his own freedom and the possibilities of the culture itself.
Topic 5. Codes of preliterate cultures.
Preliterate cultures cover a huge “prehistoric” period, including “savagery” and “barbarism” (according to the terminology of last century ethnographers L. Morgan and E. Taylor), from 50 - 20 thousand years ago (the boundary of the Upper Paleolithic) to the middle of 4 thousand. BC e. The most primitive foundations of the cultural code were laid, as we have shown, in the Lower Paleolithic - from 1 million to 50 thousand years ago. Subsequently, each of its parameters was filled with new content, and, most importantly, connections were established between them, “involving” the cultural code in the work, which each time provided a new level of self-organization of culture. It is easiest, on the basis of archaeological and paleontological finds, to record the complication of the objective world pre-literate cultures: from primitive stone strikers of the Lower Paleolithic era to the sharpest stone knives and axes, pottery, bows, arrows, fishing gear. People learned to use fire and make it, sharpen, drill, grind, weave, and then weave, burn clay, cultivate the land and domesticate animals.
Understanding how the process of development of human sign activity took place (the sign parameter of the main cultural code) requires a rather complex historical reconstruction, which experts conduct on the basis of later texts that have preserved evidence of archaic structures of life. These texts are epics recorded or remained in oral tradition - myths, fairy tales, epics, proverbs, sayings, etc. In addition, direct observations of ethnographers on the life of primitive cultures that have survived to this day also provide material for cultural and historical reconstruction .
Modern researchers of sign systems distinguish three main types of signs:
1) designation signs; 2) model signs; 3) signs-symbols.
In preliterate cultures, all these three types of signs, as well as the sign activity carried out in them, which necessarily linked the objective world and nature with the sign, developed into a special cultural code - mythological. Today our idea of myth is akin to a fairy tale. This is a fiction, a kind of collective fantasy of the distant past of humanity, telling about gods and heroes in whose exploits people saw the embodiment of their dreams. In primitive society, about which we're talking about, myth is not only a way of understanding life (the development of ideality as a parameter of the main cultural code), it is way of experiencing it both in substantive and symbolic forms. It is the last statement that needs to be examined in more detail.
The first type, designation signs, is the basis of natural language and provides communication, therefore the activity of their development is connected with any other human activity. The iconic form of this activity is word, denoting an object, action, property, etc. characteristics of the world around a person. For us today the difference between a word and a thing is clear and obvious. For primitive man, according to J. Frazer's characterization, the connection between a name and the person or thing it denotes is not an arbitrary and ideal association, but real, materially tangible ties. Actions with objects are equivalent to actions with words, and therefore, in order to protect yourself from evil forces and spirits), you need not only to protect yourself, your tribe or clan from dangerous actions, but also to protect Name, one’s own, or the name of relatives, or the name of a deceased person, for which the names are hidden, double names are given, or a taboo (ban) is imposed on pronouncing names.
We find wonderful examples of “forbidden words” in Fraser. Here is one of them: when the warriors of the Sulka tribe in New Britain are close to the lands of their enemies, the Gaktei, they try in no case to pronounce their names, but call them “o lapsiek” (which means: “rotten tree trunks”), informing By this name, they believe, the weakness, heaviness and clumsiness of their enemies.
Even more interesting are the examples that speak of the practice of tabooing the names of close relatives, and the ban on pronunciation extends to both the name and the syllables included in this name. A wife does not have the right to pronounce the name of her husband or his close relatives, and the husband should not pronounce the names of his wife’s parents. When children are given names of natural objects (fire, water), or animals, the vocabulary of such tribes is in constant updating. Experts who study the customs of surviving primitive cultures explain the presence of dialects and a large number of synonymous words by the taboo of names, the development of a mythological code, thanks to which the actions necessary for its self-preservation and their verbal and symbolic support remained in the memory of the culture.
In the work of E. Tylor one can find other, but equally impressive examples of working out the mythological code of culture, which he calls “natural grammar”. In the family of languages of the North American Alkonquin Indians, not only all animals, but also the sun, moon, stars, thunder, lightning as personified creatures, which is obligatory in any myth, belong to the animated grammatical gender. Obviously not animate also belong to the same genus, deprived of life, but due to their magical significance, objects that take advantage of this distinction are: a stone serving as an altar for manitou sacrifices, a bow, an eagle feather, a cauldron, a smoking pipe, a drum, which also strengthens the magical connection between the word and the object, reproducing the mythological cultural code.
Second type model signs, is also formed according to the rules of the mythological cultural code. In general, in any culture, actions with model signs are identical in certain parameters actions with objects, therefore sign-modeling activity is capable of replacing those types of objective actions that it models. The mythological cultural code, as in the case of designation signs, does not make any distinction between the model sign and the object. An example here is one curious reconstruction of a modern researcher who tried to unravel the mystery of the cave paintings of Paleolithic man. It is known that on the walls of caves in the Upper Paleolithic era (20 thousand years ago) images of animals and hunting scenes were made, and all these images were profile. Why? It can be assumed that after a successful hunt, when the meat of a killed, for example, bison was eaten, its skin was placed, simulating the body of the animal, against the wall of the cave. Young hunters, pursuing practical goals, sorcerers and magicians of the magical kind, in order to ensure the success of the next hunt, threw spears and arrows at this skin. Over time, the skin decayed and fell; arrow marks on the wall marked its outline. There was little left to do - trace this outline with coal from the fire... This was the first drawing. More precisely, however, both the animal’s skin and the outlined outline served as a sign-model, which made it possible to practice the most important objective - practical action - hitting the target while hunting. It is significant that within the mythological cultural code, the model and the object that it replaces are connected not only by the practical needs of people, but, more importantly, the model absorbs magical ritual powers, becoming a cultural model - a “secondary” objectivity. In contrast to the “primary” objectivity of people’s instrumental activity, the model not only shapes the action itself, but also takes upon itself and highlights its cultural mythological meaning.
In any magical ritual archaic culture objects are not just modeled real life and actions with them, but in this way a symbolic field of culture is created in which comprehension, the idea of reality in myth is formed into a special symbolic cultural layer. Ideality as a parameter of the main cultural code in preliterate cultures is developing symbolic meanings of myth. Actually, the myth itself can be considered as a symbol of archaic culture.
Third type signs-symbols, in contrast to model signs, replacing objects, they set a different structure of action with the objects themselves. In addition, a symbol sign can denote not only an object, but can replace already existing other signs, for example, model signs. Within the mythological code of culture, signs-symbols contain meanings that link instrumental, sign (natural language) and secondary objective activity (modeling) into a single, inextricable whole, thereby connecting the natural and tribal life of primitive man.
The mythological code is based on a number of basic symbols:
1) totemic-animistic(totem - in the Ojibwa language - “his kind”; animi - soul). The totem symbolizes the kinship of a person with objects of living (animals) or inanimate nature (stones, churingas, amulets, etc.). The soul, according to Tylor's definition, is “a subtle, immaterial human form, in its nature something like vapor, air or shadow” and symbolizes the life of the being that it animates. The soul is capable of leaving bodies (in a dream, during illness, as a result of witchcraft, etc.), being transferred from place to place, entering the bodies of other people, animals and even things, taking possession of them and influencing them. After death, the soul finds refuge in the afterlife (in more developed cultures) or returns to the totemic center of the tribe, to the world tree, etc., the source of life, after which it is reincarnated into a newborn; 2) elements- Space/Chaos, consisting of Water (Ocean), Fire, Earth and Sky. They symbolize the beginnings of the universe: Water (the world Ocean) is one of the incarnations of the monstrous Chaos, from it the Earth rises, the sacred marriage of Earth and Sky is the beginning of the life of the universe (Cosmos; 3 ) of the universe- Sun/Moon - a symbol of day and night, light and darkness, dying and resurrection (connected with eclipses). The stars and planets symbolize celestial hunting - a mirror reflection of man's earthly activities. So, for example, among many peoples of Northern Eurasia, the constellation Ursa Major is considered a deer or elk (often eight-legged) being pursued by a hunter, the Milky Way - ski tracks, motionless polar Star- a hole through which the elk falls to the ground, turning into an ordinary animal. The horizontal direction symbolizes the division of the world into the right and left parts, as well as orientation to the cardinal points, the vertical direction, which specifies the orientation of the top and bottom of the world order, good and evil, light and darkness, is associated with creatures embodying cosmic zones: at the top is a bird, the trunk - deer, horses, etc., sometimes - a person, and at the roots - snakes.
The mythological code has developed a special type of cultural memory that ensures immutability and closure in the self-organization of preliterate, traditional cultures: the reproduction of a given pattern in human behavior, in his attitude to the world, nature, and his responsibilities within society. These samples were in the "initial", "early", "first" time, so to speak. This is the time of the first ancestors, the first creation, the first objects, which contain magical powers spirits that influence the entire subsequent life of all people, animals and the whole world. The pattern is supported by a ritual, the implementation of which is vigilantly monitored by sorcerers, shamans, leaders of tribes and clans. During the ritual - the mythical action - the pattern is demonstrated, maintaining the memory of the culture and making the cultural code work. Today we discover Homer and read about the heroic exploits of Odysseus; today for us the myth is enclosed in a book. In the culture where it arose and existed, a preliterate culture, the myth was “read” through ritual, magical actions and rituals, in which all members of the clan, of any age and gender, were included with constant regularity and constancy.
Why is there a need for a new way of encoding cultural memory, how is the cultural code reconfigured to support a new way of self-organization of culture? And in general, is change in culture possible?
Topic 6. Codes of written cultures.
Written cultures were formed from the end of the 4th millennium to the beginning. 3 thousand BC (Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia) and still exist today. Their local, historically specific diversity is obvious. Different languages national traditions, writing techniques that have changed over the millennia, religions, social structures and political institutions. Understanding the impossibility of covering all this historical diversity, we can identify three problems in connection with the topic that interests us:
1) are there any fundamental changes in culture due to the emergence
writing? 2) how does the appearance of sacred books affect the work of cultural memory? 3) to what extent is printing capable of changing the cultural code?
Let's start with the first of the identified problems. Writing emerges in conditions of dramatically changing social life, where the first states with urban centers emerge, state bureaucracy appears: castes of priests, scribes and managers; warriors and captives, often turned into slaves; farmers and artisans.
Culture is mastering this new social space, developing new types of objective activity associated with the need to cultivate large areas of land (irrigation), build powerful palaces, temples, tombs (pyramids of Egypt, for example), new forms of sign activity, providing new content for the ideal parameter of the main cultural code. A state with new power structures sets a different character of life than a clan, tribe or community. And those methods of self-organization of culture that were suitable for tribal relations are not suitable in the new system of social connections, based on a fairly developed division of labor, the presence of different social groups.
The mythological cultural code with its identity of objectivity, iconicity and ideality is destroyed. Objectivity associated with instrumental economic activity (cultivation, construction, craft) becomes the lot of free farmers, slaves, and artisans. The city requires food supplies, which are concentrated in the palaces of the rulers, so special officials (managers and scribes) are busy keeping track of the crops grown in the fields, and they also collect taxes to the treasury. All this expands sign activity into a new plane, contributing to the emergence of not only writing, but also numbers, counting and simple operations with numbers.
In addition, on alluvial (flooded) soils, it was necessary to re-mark out plots of land between its owners every year. Managers, together with scribes, developed a way to mark rectangular, trapezoidal and triangular shape, began to calculate areas and use drawings to calculate them. Modeling sign activity determined not only magical rituals, but also developed practical-cognitive spheres, without completely freeing them from sacred symbolism. Moreover, mastery of the symbolism contained in sacred texts alienated managers and priests from other social groups, making a caste sacred, which takes upon itself the responsibilities of ordering (cultivating) social relations through the Gods and their power. One should not think that this process of developing equally social and cultural codes took place softly, bloodlessly, and after the righteous word was spoken (“do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness”), only righteous deeds were immediately accomplished.. Fear of God (as well as earlier in primitive tribal cultures, the fear of disturbing, offending, awakening the anger of the spirits of ancestors) is psychological characteristics, lying deep in the cultural code. At the same time, in the Old Testament, for example, one is struck by the courage with which the patriarchs conduct conversations, sometimes reminiscent of bargaining, with God: questioning, asking for clarification of meanings and persuasions not to do terrible things in anger at their people. Actually, this is a relationship, interconnection (by the way, in Latin religio literally means “connection”) of each carrier of a given specific culture with their God (in monotheistic religions: Judaism, Buddhism, later in Christianity and Islam) or the pantheon of Gods (among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Brahmanists in India), thereby marking their belonging to their cultural whole and giving new content to the ideal parameter.
The new cultural code, in contrast to the example of distant mythological time, constantly reproduced in ritual actions, has a different form of expression - written, the content of which is contained in Holy Books: "Book of the Dead"ancient Egyptians," Old Testament"ancient Jews" Avesta"ancient Iranians - Zaroostrians," Vedas"ancient Brahmin Indians," Iliad e" and " Odyssey"Ancient Greeks.
In a written text, the magic of words takes the place of the magic of action (ritual). These words in the mouths of priests and priests are symbols of meanings inaccessible to others, guarding the secrets of all things, Divine and Eternal. But even ordinary people have access to the words written in the Holy Books: they are given prayers - appeals to the Gods, they are also told the events recorded in the books, in which traditions coming from the depths of centuries are easily identified. This is how the text combines the tradition of myth and faith in what is said, pronounced, transmitted Word to each and everyone. Thus, the new code of written culture includes elements of the cultural past.
Of course, culture is not limited only to this “textual” way of storing and transmitting cultural memory. The differentiation of social and economic life, the emergence of trade - exchange, not only economic, but also cultural, for the merchant is a carrier of not only goods, but also cultural information, complicated the action of cultural codes, created mixed socio-cultural connections and ways of developing new social and natural spaces. In each of the Holy Books mentioned above, the content of the texts various, the relationships between the Gods and their peoples are also different, which largely determines the typological diversity of cultures based on these written cultural codes. Christianity, which emerged in the 1st century, completely removes the ethnic obligation of faith in one’s God: the sacrifice of Christ, who suffered for people, equalizes all tribes and ethnic groups in their faith. The sacred texts of the Bible (Old and New Testaments), the Koran, and the Buddhist canons of the Tipitaka remain the main carriers of the written code of the cultures that have adopted these three world monotheistic religions.
Changes and restructuring of this cultural code began in Christian Europe in the 2nd half of the 15th century, the reason for which was the invention of the printing press by Johannes Guttenberg. The holy book, texts of the church fathers, commentaries, lives of saints and other sacred literature for a few dedicated ministers of the church turned, especially through the efforts of the leaders of the Reformation, into a text accessible to all literate people, which very quickly spread throughout Europe in translations in native languages (as is known, the sacred language of the Bible in catholic church Latin was considered).
The appearance of the printing press was not an accident. Social change global scale unfolded in Europe: the formation of world commodity markets, the discovery of new lands, the emergence of manufactories, a new social structure of the city. Each of the parameters of the main cultural code was internally connected with these social transformations, reacting very sensitively to them. Printed book circulation opened up other opportunities for mastering the ongoing social changes in the code of cultural memory. The new cultural code did not take shape immediately; it took more than one century, and only by the Age of Enlightenment (2nd half of the 18th century) can its all-pervasive effect be recorded. This cultural code was nurtured by European science, which had strengthened in its strength and influence on society. Its result is reliable, verifiable in practice, experimental (experiment - new type sign activity) by its nature, rational knowledge was introduced into the mechanism of cultural memory, rebuilding it.
The independence of the human mind has become a discovery European culture. Now he, and not the Holy Books, can be entrusted with understanding the course of history; he makes discoveries in science and technology; his energy drives the industrial revolution; he attempts to change social life itself: the attempt to implement the ideas of “Freedom - Equality - Fraternity” opened up hitherto unprecedented possibilities for the influence of politics on both society and culture; finally, education and upbringing should have formed reasonable person. Knowledge as a fact, a scientific theory, a method of practical transformation of nature, including human nature, forms the basis of the cultural code of Western Europe of the New Age, acquiring an information form by the twentieth century, thanks to newspapers, and then radio, cinema and TV.
Of course, the traditions of the old cultural code were preserved. Partly in a transformed form, they are alive in Europe today, not to mention the countries of the East, where the code based on the Sacred Text is still leading (countries of the Islamic region, partly India and other Central Asian states). The contradictions between the cultural code and the social space that it masters and “serves”, the contradictions between traditional cultural memory and the new way of its operation, the so-called information memory - all these are independent problems that cannot be analyzed here. Let's try in the most general outline find the characteristics of another cultural code that is being formed before our eyes.
Meanings of culture- this is the content that cannot be expressed directly and unambiguously. Meaning can be understood as that which provides the universal cohesion of the meanings of the signs of a given language. The meanings have several levels:
- 1) the most superficial level of meaning is the so-called common sense. This meaning has already manifested itself at the level of consciousness, rationalized and generally accepted. It coincides with the meaning and is expressed verbally;
- 2) the deepest level of meaning is the unmanifested content that connects a person with the world of values, laws, and patterns of behavior of a given culture. If all cultural phenomena are considered as facts of communication, as messages, then they can only be understood in relation to some kind of intermediary, because the connection of sign systems with the reality they reflect is not direct. Therefore, a system of special, meaningfully distinguishable features—cultural codes—is necessary.
The very concept of “code” first appeared in communications technology (telegraph code, Morse code), in computer technology, mathematics, cybernetics, and genetics (genetic code). In this case, a code is understood as a set of signs and a system of certain rules with the help of which information can be presented in the form of a set of these signs for transmission, processing and storage.
Code-- model of the rule for generating a number of specific messages. All codes can be compared with each other on the basis of a common code, which is simpler and more comprehensive. Messages, cultural texts can open up to different readings depending on the code used. The code allows one to penetrate to the semantic level of culture; without knowledge of the code, the cultural text will be closed, incomprehensible, and unperceived. A person will see a system of signs, and not a system of meanings and meanings.
The main culture code must have the following characteristics:
self-sufficiency for the production, transmission and preservation of human culture;
openness to change;
versatility. In pre-Olympic cultures, the most important cultural code was the system of names. For primitive man, actions with objects were equivalent to actions with words, and therefore the name was an essential part of himself. In his view, personal names must be preserved and kept secret, since the enemy can magically influence him through the name. It was a very common phenomenon that every man, woman or child of the tribe, in addition to the name that was used in everyday life, also had secret names known to the elders and initiates. The same custom was preserved in more late times, for example, in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians had two names: true (or big) and good (or small). The first was kept in the deepest secret, the second was known to everyone.
This kind of taboo on a name is due to the fact that the name really reflected the sociocultural significance and position of a person in a given society, since in pre-Olympic cultures the system of names was a mechanism for encoding and updating culture, when the name is the information itself, and not a label; through a name it is possible to carry out real manipulations with an object.
Cultural universals- concepts that express those features of cultural phenomena that are found in all cultures: ancient and new, small and large. They express those characteristics of cultural experience that are significant for any culture (fire, water, laughter, tears, labor, male = female, etc.).
