Culture is the collective Tau-narrative: the shared system of symbols, meanings, and stories that maintains collective Tau-map coherence. It provides shared Tau-address orientation — the answer to "who are we, where do we come from, what do we value."
Cultural transmission is Tau-pattern inheritance: the propagation of stable collective Tau-patterns from established to developing Tau-addresses through language, art, ritual, and practice. Education is formalised Tau-pattern inheritance infrastructure.
Cultures change as their Tau-narratives evolve: new Tau-patterns are incorporated, obsolete ones fade, foreign Tau-patterns are absorbed or rejected. Cultural contact is Tau-narrative exchange — sometimes enriching, sometimes overwriting (cultural imperialism is forced Tau-narrative replacement).
Art is the crystallisation of Tau-patterns into transmissible form. Great art persists because it successfully encodes Tau-patterns of high resonance frequency — patterns that remain meaningful across time because they correspond to deep features of shared Tau-field experience.
A civilisation is a large-scale Tau-network stabilised by multi-layered Tau-narrative infrastructure: legal codes, written history, monumental architecture, shared religion or philosophy. Civilisational decline is Tau-network entropy — increasing incoherence in the collective Tau-field and its maintenance systems.
Cultural memory (myth, history, archive) is the Tau-pattern repository of the collective address. It allows the collective Tau-map to incorporate patterns older than any living address. Cultural amnesia — the loss of Tau-pattern repository access — is civilisational Tau-map truncation.