The Being of Culture and Society

What is the nature of culture and society in the human landscape? Are "culture" and "society" entities unto themselves, deserving of protections, or are they abstractions simply bandied about in discourse?

Do these protections rate on a level with individual rights, or should the rights of the individual human supersede anything afforded culture and society?

How important are culture and society?

If culture is comprised of individuals with rights, and is defined as the collective manner of a people, do they have the collective right to change and /or defend their own culture as they see fit?

So when does the right of the individual supersede the right of a culture? Does it ever?

As such, I believe culture and society are worthy of protection, if for no other reason than they took so long to develop - and usually for good reason. This is not to say that cultures and societies are not dynamic and will change over time; of course they will, like all living things.

However, the idea that a single individual right always trumps those of culture and society is not just ludicrous, it's harmful.

Just as free speech will not allow someone to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, so must we, at some point, recognize that some things that are done - either legally, through the judicial system or otherwise - that are just plain harmful to culture and society. One of these is not requiring assimilation.

Take illegal immigration. It's a very sad situation for people to have to uproot themselves with only the clothes on their backs to seek a better life. However, this goes back to the basic question: should the newcomers overtake the rights of those that are in the culture and society which they hope to enter? Should the culture bend to suit the newcomers?

And what about the culture that the illegals will enter, and can't help but alter; don't the existing members of that culture have something to say about how their way of life is made different?

Do we have the discipline to follow our own logic that created the culture that we love in the first place? Or are we so displease with our society that we feel it should be changed substantially through at-will immigration, and non-assimilation? Should we require fluency in multiple languages?

If culture and society are entities that we recognoze and hold dear, then don't they deserve protection, too?