Cultures can be well thought of as sand dunes! Why sand dunes? There are fundamental behavioral rules in cultures that are formalized for example through laws, natural environments and traditionalized rules over (sometimes) centuries and therefore indeed minor subject to change and often nonnegotiable by a large amount of agents of one culture. Yet, there are less structurally consolidated aspects of cultures that are therefore relative and rather subject to change. In other words, the further towards the peak of the sand dune one gets, the stronger individually negotiable are the values. At the same time, metaphorically speaking, the sand (aka values, norms, rules, etc.) can blow away from the top or move downwards and become more firm and less negotiable. Culture, at the end of the day, is a subject to change and a perspective-dependent conception.
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