As a work in progress, man is both a subject and an object of cultivation. No culture is without cultivation, both in its figurative and literal senses. As habitual beings, our repeated actions create a pattern that influences and informs our default perspective of reality. This disposition comes from the cultivation of one’s life and its ramifications.
Man cultivates his values and constructs his life by processing the data of human daily experiences, making choices and executing resolutions. Culture is the aggregation of these facts in a mélange that informs and reinforces further similar acts. It is in these daily experiences that one cultivates one’s culture as such. While culture has an overarching impact on the individual and community, it is not a prefabricated, factory-fitted, infallible norm.
Constant domestication and cultivation of virtues make the culture better. Work, the instrument of mending the brokenness of the human person and family, typifies cultivation. In other words, work drives civilisation by participating in the cultivation of men and women. Like culture, a faith not adequately cultivated by consciously searching for its best understanding, expression, and value degenerates into a monster.