"Culture and individuality are mortal enemies"; but are they really?

On a never ending morning scroll, I came across an Instagram story that caught my attention. It wasn’t a photograph, neither a selfie or a song shared through Apple Music, rather it was a screenshot of a Co-Star message that said: culture and individuality are mortal enemies.

For who’s not familiar, Co-star is an astrology app, that as said by its founders “deciphers the mystery of human relations through NASA and biting truth”. It is basically an app that allows you to explore your astrological chart, while actively giving you inputs, often times triggers, to understand your connection and approach to the world and your life. Pretty cool right?

A mind-bending exercise, if you ask me, carefully curated with daily updates and morning alerts that as they linger on your phone’ s wallpaper leave you baffled, intrigued; sometimes vulnerable, ultimately leading to moments of undisguised reflection like this one.

Culture and individuality are mortal enemies; but are they really?

Broadening up the meaning of the word culture, and declining into aspects that do not only relate to our society, but are part of a bigger conversation entailing how culture affects people’s personal relationship to their selves, I start thinking. And as I order my thoughts while involuntarily flinching my eyes, my mind says no; they are not. Actually it may not be appropriate at all, to even use the word enemies in the first place, never.

According to renowned sources, “Culture is the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group” (Merriem Webster Dictionary). It is basically all the notions, aspects, and ways, often indoctrinated from a young age, that help to determine a sense of belonging within a group of people.

Mutually, they are the social norms, the codes, influences and traditions carried and profoundly embraced by individuals, especially minorities, to reclaim their individual identity in a society where the latter is constantly challenged and often overpowered. Think of Hip-Hop culture for example, in those cases culture becomes a necessary tool for a right livelihood, as well as survival.

As we acknowledge this, I can’t help but wonder, how can such an explicit aid to self determination be considered a threat to individuality? And if that’s so, whose individuality are we talking about?

Affirming culture and individuality as enemies of each other, can represent a huge threat. Not only to us as people, but to our ability of recognizing within the “cultural” beliefs that we choose to embrace as part of ourselves an actual tool for oneness.

Polarizing culture into a definition for the mainstream, or conventional norms that can only be successfully applied to specific social groups is an actual recipe for disaster. It’s like half painting a universal canvas leaving the corners out, but selling it at full price saying that the blank corners are part of the masterpiece as well.

Consciously or unconsciously ignoring the corners does not only represent a missed opportunity, but it ultimately fosters the message that true individuality can only be achieved by dissociating from culture or one’s culture; and that is false, it is dishonest.

Unless we tend to the objective and subjective multitudes of the word culture as well as the various meanings that it has and it represents for different people, seeing it as an enemy to the practice of individuality, is delusional and unnecessary exclusive.

Something to watch:

• Exceptional discourse from Hilda Mwangi on cultural diversity that reflects on how her individuality was and its shaped by the codes, influences and traditions she was taught, as well as those she encountered in her adulti life. Food for thought, incredibly articulated.

Something to wander on:

• The one and only, Maya Angelou’s poem, Still I rise. A classic, a song, a statement, the embodiment of the constant quest to reach one’s oneness.

Something to listen to: