A Systems View of the Cultural Personality: A Mimetic Approach to a Better Future

A systems view of cultural personality will be explored in an attempt to find a mimetic approach to a better understanding of our future. A systems view—here referring to the basic structure of our existence—shows how memes get transmitted from parent to child and peer to peer, and then transferred between different generations and between people separate from the mother culture.

This view introduces a more complete definition of culture in the sense that it covers interactions between humans and their physical environments, as well as the transmission of memes throughout all 11 model phases of human existence.

Who should attend: Teachers of all levels with a futurist view who are involved in cross-cultural subjects and intercultural communication, as well as business leaders, consultants, and anyone who has to deal with people from another culture.

What you’ll learn: The participants will learn how to understand the relationship between the mother culture and other cultures; in other words, to understand how memes work into you and others.

How this new knowledge can be applied: Outlining a basic chain of personal memes will help us understand our thinking about ourselves: To know ourselves will lead to a better understanding of others. This, in turn, helps us understand how creative we have to be in cross-cultural situations, which will lead to a better solution in situations involving people from outside of the mother culture. It will be one big step toward peace.

Kazuo Mizuta, futurist; professor emeritus, Comparative Culture Studies, Kyoto Sangyo University, Hyogo, Japan

key words: meme, cultural personality, complexity model of culture
issue areas: Learning and Education