The socio-cultural order is not a totality or a whole in relation to which individuals act as its parts. However, there are domains of order—for example, the state and other types of political and economic organization—that tend to become a totality. By combining economic and political power, the state becomes a self-sufficient meaning. By separating individuals from humanity and standing between them, states and social categories make justice and trust dependent on their functioning.
There are generally two approaches to the application of the term “culture.” In the first case, culture is defined as everything that is opposed to “nature,” and it is precisely in this sense that we have used this term so far. In the second case, culture is defined as that which goes beyond the boundaries of economics and politics. We will call the first, broader meaning “culture” and the second, narrower meaning “culture*.” The division of culture into politics, economics and culture* is itself the result of the evolution of meanings, their division, addition and multiplication.
Our broader understanding of culture differs from the approach that is characteristic of many representatives of the social sciences. For example, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson reduce culture to culture*, that is, ideas, beliefs, values, morals:
“The culture hypothesis, just like the geography hypothesis, has a distinguished lineage, going back at least to the great German sociologist Max Weber, who argued that the Protestant Reformation and the Protestant ethic it spurred played a key role in facilitating the rise of modern industrial society in Western Europe. The culture hypothesis no longer relies solely on religion, but stresses other types of beliefs, values, and ethics as well” (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, p. 56-57).
Reducing culture to culture* might make sense if we assume that culture* is in some way a minimal description of culture as a whole. By culture* we mean relationships between people with respect to thinking. Thinking is not limited to working with symbols and concepts; at its core, thinking is a deeply emotional and thus psychophysical process; this is evident, for example, in religion, art and play. Nor is thinking limited to the processes of the brain; it is the activity of the entire human body, insofar as this activity is aimed at human psychology, at the mental world. Culture* is, if you will, a