All posts by Adi Bors

What is the relationship between knowledge and culture?

Knowledge and culture are inextricably intertwined, both affecting each other in their own ways. Differing cultural backgrounds can also influence the way knowledge is obtained, for example curricular differences in different countries influence the knowledge obtained from education. Even though standardisation can be implemented, the way the knowledge is conveyed by the sharers of the knowledge can influence the knowers. Specific opinions will be passed on, which may be held predominantly by certain cultures due to historical events and localised attitudes, such as mental fortitude to bias, propaganda and corruption, depending on the historical culture associated with the area. For example, old people, especially in Poland, are very susceptible to government propaganda through the state-owned TV channels, as the culture during their youth was so that the only means of mass media communications were state-owned, so they only had one side of the story to hear. However, having the amount of channels and mass media now compared to then, when everything said on state media was true, can prove problems, as questions are not asked even when questionable knowledge is being provided through questionable sources, which can cause misinformation to spread through the elderly population (not limited to just them though). In contrast, a culture that has been well established as free, democratic, not immune to corruption or secrecy but with public opinion being the most important, i.e. the UK, private media is always picking fights with state affairs and giving alternate views to articles and news, and whilst this is not always true, it can teach the population to form a critical thought process to deduce the strengths and weaknesses in both arguments, not limiting but purifying knowledge flow to knowers.