Creating Positive Culture

One of the idealistic dreams of the leaders, philosophers, and artists of every age has been the creation of the perfect or Utopian society. In order for this to work, everybody in the society has to be willing to do what is necessary to maintain such a culture, and they have to live perfect lives; which, unfortunately is impossible as long as we remain mortal and human. We are subject to error, no matter how hard we may try to be perfect. Many religious people, particularly Christians, believe in some form of a concept often called "grace" by which God makes up the difference for our imperfect state. My personal belief on the matter is that we must put forth our very best effort as an exercise of faith in order for that grace to apply, though many Christians would disagree. However, this is a topic to be discussed elsewhere. For right now, we will assume that perfect culture cannot actually be achieved through our own human efforts and focus instead on simply doing our best to improve our culture as much as possible.

Society exists on different levels, in different units. The smallest and most basic unit of society is the family. Larger ones include extended families, friends, church groups, and businesses and organizations. Then of course, we have towns, cities, states and countries. In order to improve culture, it is unsound to try to start by tackling the larger units. We, as individuals, have very little power to make much change on such a large scale. The place where we can most effectively do the most good is in our own families. Later, once a family is significantly improved, the family as a whole can work on larger units.

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