What Culture Does

"We must needs live in and with the help of some culture (even a syncretic or sliding-scale one, i.e. one taken seriously to a varying extent, according to context). No social gathering, no meal, no establishment or perpetuation of a human relationship, is conceivable without some idiom to set the scene, limit expectations, and establish rights and duties” (p207)

Do we create our culture today with any more conscious effort than societies on the cusp of culture?

Ernest Gellner
Plough, Sword and Book
U. of Chicago Press
1988