Spiritual Life of Society and Culture
Core concepts
Culture is the totality of human-created material and spiritual values. Distinguish material and spiritual culture, and material from spiritual production. Know the functions of culture: humanisation, socialisation, regulation, transmission of experience, communication. Understand subculture (a variant within a culture) versus counterculture (oppositional), and the concepts of cultural universalism and particularism, tolerance, and cultural dialogue.
Spiritual life includes religion, morality, art, science, education, and ideology. Know the world religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) and the distinction between world and national religions; know that morality is regulated by public opinion and conscience, while law is regulated by the state.
Traps
A classic trap is calling any difference a subculture or counterculture. A subculture shares the mainstream's core values with variations; a counterculture rejects them. Another trap: equating spiritual culture with religion only. Questions often test the difference between morality (informal, conscience, public opinion) and law (formal, state-backed). Also beware of the claim that popular culture is necessarily low quality - mass culture is commercial and widely distributed, which is a structural, not an evaluative, claim.
Worked example
A group adopts mainstream values but dresses and speaks differently. Subculture or counterculture? Rule of thumb: check the attitude to core values, not the surface style. Shared core values with stylistic variation = subculture; active rejection of core values = counterculture.
Rule of thumb
Culture is everything made by people; nature is what exists without human making - questions often test this boundary with objects like a beaver's dam (nature) versus a birdhouse (culture).