ABSTRACT
Culture has many definitions, but here the term will be defined as the means people use to structure and express their experience conceptually so that belief, knowledge, or information can be transmitted from one generation to the next. One of the chief means is day to day behaviour, but this essay will concentrate on hand-made or machine-produced objects (or a combination of the two), all of which have a three-dimensional physical reality, with a ‘double’ or ‘spirit world’ or ‘psychic’ reality often implied within the same object. It will also consider at some length such means as oral story-telling or information sharing, often accompanied by body movements, music, or creation of pictures that are immediately erased or dissolved. These ephemeral means often have their own kind of permanence, depending on such factors as the number of times they occur and the way in which the next generation is trained to recreate them.
