Stickwoman's twelve points of culture

All things have an opposite. Yin and the Yang. Stickman's twleve points of community is the science. That is the physical developments of a community. Stickman's lovely counterpart, whom I'll call Stickwoman... she's good-lookin, huh? She meditates in the middle of the twelve points of culture. This is the art. The Yin and the Yang. The art and science of a generic community. It is everywhere.

In the same sense of quantifying work in a generic community, the same can be done for culture. There are a limited number of cultural elements that are present (or could be) in every community. I deduced these elements in the same manner as Stickman's 12 points of community: I thought of a website that put form to culture. I thought of Ten Thousand Villages. Ten Thousand Villages is a successful non-profit company that purchases arts and craftwork from artisans in developing countries and sells them in retail stores in the United States and Canada. I went to www.tenthousandvillages.com and looked at how they organized their merchandise. If you rollover the “shop” button on their main webpage, you can observe the twelve divisions of merchandise they sell. I copied those elements into a WORD document and mulled over how they could align with the Peace Corps experience.

I then reflected on my own Peace Corps service. Having returned from Cape Verde, Africa in September 2009, my experience is still fresh in my mind. I asked myself, what are the things that were present in Cape Verde, that are everywhere? I made a list.

I compared the two and arrived at the twelve points above, coincidentally the same number. The last category, personal, I felt pertained more to people as individuals developing their own personal philosophy… an equally important element of culture that perhaps deserves it’s own category. But for now, I thought it would be best to leave it as part of general culture.

Anyway, these diagrams go for simplicity. Simplicity is the first step toward progress.
oh stick people. you are good people.