...culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture.
Interpretation
Culture evolves through challenge and interaction with counter-cultures, shaping and being shaped by people.
This quote by Muhammad Yunus highlights the dynamic relationship between culture and individuals, emphasizing that culture must be actively engaged and questioned to remain vibrant and relevant. When a culture stagnates and becomes merely a backdrop for people's lives without challenge or change, it becomes irrelevant, suggesting that the vitality of culture depends on its ability to adapt and be influenced by new ideas and perspectives.
In practice
In a lecture about the importance of cultural diversity, this quote can illustrate the necessity of questioning and evolving traditions.
Civilization has given us enormous successes: going to the moon, technology. But then this is the civilisation that took us to debt, environmental crisis, every single crisis. We need a civilization where we say goodbye to these things.
What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.
People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.
Some people think that poor people are lazy. Actually, it takes a lot of work to survive when you are dirt-poor.
Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.
By simply capitalizing on core strengths and knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs can engage in an emerging business model that will enable them to create - and demonstrate - real, sustainable social impact in society.
Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.
Just as the natural environment depends on biodiversity, so the human environment depends on cultural diversity, because no one civilization encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind.
There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.
No one's of Pakistani origin in any British show. That's why every actor of color is here working in the States. It's true.
The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.
To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.
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