Culture

In passing, the quote, "That's not cultured, that's just foreign." inspired this journal.

What is culture, and how can one be cultured or uncultured?

Culture, as I'm going to arbitrarily define it, is simply a sum of experiences and traditions. It can be applied to one person, a small group of people, a large group of people, and so on and so forth. So calling someone cultured seems redundant. Everyone has a sum of experiences and traditions and it is too subjective a subject matter to say that one sum has any greater value than another unless one simply bases it on quantity, in which case the only way to be more cultured than another is by being older than another. By this definition as well, there is no such thing as being uncultured and by that extension culture as a comparative substance is, again, redundant. You cannot exist without a culture or with any more culture than anyone else. Culture is so broad and yet so specific, it cannot and should not be seen as a way to place one above another. It is not better or worse, but simply is.

For the record, I count Nobuo Uematsu a better composer than Peter Frampton and someone who listens to Uematsu more cultured than someone who listens to Frampton, that both are of value in music culture, and that someone who listens to both is even further cultured than their peers.

But no, cultured is not a viable comparative adjective.