How is culture like an individual?

In reading Benedict's Patterns of Culture, one can see how the author draws several parallels between cultures and individuals. From the ideas of war in Chapter I to the discussions of puberty in Chapter II, it is clear that many seemingly different cultures share more than meets the eye. However, one of her most interesting points that draws similarities between culture and the individual are her ideas on change. Benedict states:

"Changes may be very disquieting, and involve great losses, but this is due to the difficulty of change itself, not to the fact that our age and country has hit upon the one possible motivation under which human life can be conducted. Change, we must remember with all its difficulties, is inescapable" (Benedict 36).

Changes in culture and changes in individuals as they come of age are very similar. The struggle and emotional turmoil that accompany both a changing civilization and an individual have been seen in every text we have encountered up to this point in class. One example in Winesburg, Ohio comes as George Willard attempts to come of age in a small town, but must ultimately leave that town in order to grow, while Winesburg itself struggles through a time of change as industrialization takes over America. This idea is also seen in The Village and the Jungle, the village is being encroached upon by British rule, while the individual Silindu is affected by his own changing family dynamic as he must let go of his daughters. (In the novel we also witnesses the changing role of women in both the family and the society.) Finally, it is seen in Mrs. Dalloway with the impending notion of war that pervades the novel, as well as in the character of Peter Walsh as he contemplates the passage of time and his own mortality.

Benedict goes on to say that "Civilizations might change far more radically than any human authority has ever had the will or the imagination to change them, and still be completely workable" (36). This idea of a balance between change and tradition is one that never seems to be struck in the novels we have covered thus far. To accept the new without rejecting the old seems to be a difficult task to accomplish in any civilization.