I love definitions because they help focus the mind. For decades, we are said to have been in a culture war. As in any war, it helps to know one’s enemy.
One online dictionary defines culture this way: “the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.”
One secondary definition is under the subheading anthropology: “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.” I especially like that second definition.
So culture is a sum total. It is also about ways of living by more than a few humans, with all of that being willed to succeeding generations.
Those of a certain age remember what their parents or grandparents transmitted to them following the Great Depression and World War II. It was the sum total of values and beliefs they shared, the values held by those Tom Brokaw correctly labeled the Greatest Generation.