Examples of culture are widely known. But what is the essence of culture? What is it that leads us call something ‘culture’ and exclude other things from the concept? I’ve not encountered an explanation or a definition that covers every nuance and have therefore resorted to coming up with a definition myself.

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Life is a continuous process of one option happening in the face of alternatives. When the options can be chosen, we call them ‘choices’. In its broadest sense, culture is a set of shared preferences among choices. Preferences like which foods to prepare and how, what clothing to wear if any, how to pronounce words, whether to speak plainly or indirectly, and how to interact with other people. Culture also includes more abstract preferences like how to choose political candidates and how to express a sense of humor. Sometimes these last two are the same thing.

Culture covers a million and one different kinds of preferences. Probably more but I stopped counting. The exact number is unknowable, and the boundaries of culture are blurry and ever-shifting. A set of shared preferences becomes a culture when a group of people adopt these preferences in their daily lives.

Cultures can be very broad in the case of nations, regions, or social media platforms. Smaller groups like companies or towns or message boards also have cultures, and micro-cultures exist within families, classrooms, etc. Social pastimes like gardening or martial arts or casual computer games or drag racing all have their own cultures. All large cultures can be divided into subcultures based on sub-preferences within a larger set of common preferences.

A humor culture is a set of shared preferences for expressing humor. Ordinary culture and humor culture continually influence each other. The 1963 instrumental saxophone song ‘Yakety Sax’ is detectably humorous simply as music. However the sense that the song is funny is culturally reinforced by its frequent use as background music for humorous video.

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