Fun for Friday: The Connection Between Cult and Culture
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
I work alongside archaeologists in the cultural resources management field, which means I see the word “culture” a lot. And I couldn’t help but notice, as I was typing it, that “cult” is the first four letters of that word. So I figured there must be a connection!
There is, and it makes a lot of sense when you look at the etymology. The connection is to cultivation, with the Latin root meaning “to till” (in a context of tilling the earth). “Culture” could be seen as a tilling of society, or “cultivation through education, systematic improvement and refinement of the mind.” And cult, then, is a tilling of people through beliefs.
I also came across a couple of articles where the authors had this same question. One, “The Meanings of Culture,” by Arthur Asa Berger, looks at several other words with the same root, and another, from Rosanna M. White, looks primarily at culture and cult and their connection to agriculture.
This leaves me wondering about a corporatized cult with “cult resources management” … definitely sounds like a dystopian world or possibly a humor piece poking fun at such an idea!
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