The Culture Curse

Most cultures don’t start as choices. They start as solutions.

I learned this in my first year of university, sitting in a Sociology 101 lecture. Our professor was explaining how culture forms—how habits, norms, and traditions emerge and persist not through grand decisions or moral declarations, but through repetition, sequence, and compliance, people doing what they were shown without ever questioning it.

To make the concept stick, she told a story I have never forgotten.

Growing up, she and her siblings always trimmed both ends off the ham before cooking it. Every holiday. Every gathering. Ends off. No exceptions. She never questioned it. This was how ham was prepared in her household. It was what she saw, what she practiced, and what she carried into adulthood, so consistently, that when she went grocery shopping, she deliberately chose a larger ham, already accounting for what would be lost once both ends were removed. This wasn’t occasional. It was automatic. It was normal. It was culture. She and her siblings did this their entire lives.

Years later, one of her sisters—let’s call her Lily—began dating the man who would eventually become her husband. At one of their early family dinners, he watched the ham being prepared and casually asked, “Why do you cut the ends off?” Lily paused, realizing she didn’t know the reason. Then she answered, defensively, “I don’t know. We’ve just always done it this way.” He pressed further. “You know that dries it out, right?” A comment that, against all odds, did not prevent him from eventually becoming her husband.

What had never been questioned suddenly felt challenged. Lily responded quickly, defensively. “My mother is a great cook, and this is how she’s always done it. If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.” And just like that, curiosity was met with defensiveness. Not because the question was wrong, but because it disrupted something familiar. The moment passed, but Lily’s curiosity lingered. Why do we cut the ends off the ham? It does dry it out.

Fast forward to the next large family gathering. The ham was once again oversized, trimmed on both ends, and placed in the center of the table, drier than it needed to be. Lily, now still dating the same man, found herself staring at the familiar centerpiece with fresh awareness. What had once been unquestioned now felt impossible to ignore. The ham—large, dry, and ceremoniously altered—had remained an untouched subject since she started dating her husband. And in a moment of discrete, collective courage, Lily leaned over to her sister and asked softly, “Do you actually know why we cut the ends off the ham?” Her sister—my professor—shrugged. “That’s just how Mom showed me.”

Later, when everyone was seated and the timing felt right, she finally asked her mother directly. “Hey, Mom. . . can I ask you something? Why do we cut the ends off the ham? We actually don’t know why.” Her mother laughed. She waved her hand dismissively and said, “Oh, that. I only did that because your father and I had one big pot when we were first married, and the ham never quite fit. A bigger pot was too expensive back then, so I just cut the ends off to make it work.” That was it.

The room erupted in laughter. Years—decades—of habit, defended without question, passed down without explanation, all traced back to a single limitation that no longer existed. The family had long since owned multiple pots, including ones large enough to fit a ham without modification. But the behavior persisted because no one had ever stopped to ask why.

That’s culture.

Culture often forms innocently, and sensibly, in the moment. Then it outlives the conditions that created it. That’s why asking questions matters, not in a judging or dismissive way, but as a way of making sure we’re still on the right track. Conditions are always changing, and it follows that culture should change with them. Yet for reasons I still haven’t figured out, we tend to remain fixed in our culture while everything around it evolves freely.

I’ve never forgotten that story because it turned me into the adult version of a five-year-old who never stops asking “why.” Why do we do this? Why is this expected? Why is this tolerated? And what problem was this originally solving? Asking those questions has led me to uncover some surprisingly outdated origins. Practices that once made sense but now create friction, waste, or harm. Patterns that continue not because they’re effective, but because they’re familiar. And culture always has a cost.

In the ham story, the cost was minimal. No harm, no foul, just a little less ham to go around and, in my opinion, the best parts lost. But stretched over forty-plus years and five sisters—each buying slightly larger hams a few times a year—the waste becomes harder to ignore. Especially when the original constraint no longer exists. The collective cost of “making it work” far exceeded what a single, appropriately sized pot would have cost one person at the outset. That’s the quiet impact of culture. Small, reasonable choices made in isolation can compound over time, shaping habits that outlive their usefulness. So the next time you’re about to “make it work,” pause and ask yourself: If this decision became culture, would I still make it? Because even choices that feel personal or temporary today can influence and impact those that follow in your footsteps.

What makes questioning culture difficult is that curiosity is often misread as judgment. Asking “why” can sound like criticism, even when it isn’t. People hear accusation where none is intended and feel ridiculed despite genuine curiosity. And so, most people stop asking. That’s the real curse of culture, not that it forms, but that it hardens. Once solidified, it becomes difficult to change, and any attempt to revisit it feels like resistance or an uphill battle. Behaviors continue long after their purpose has expired. Tolerance becomes tradition. And eventually, no one remembers how things began, only that “this is how it’s always been done.”

This matters because the most harmful patterns in our lives—personally, professionally, systemically—are rarely born from malice. They’re born from adaptation. From people doing their best with what they had at the time. But adaptation without reflection eventually becomes limitation. The moment we stop asking why is the moment culture stops serving us and starts shaping us in ways we never consciously chose.

Alignment begins with curiosity. Because sometimes, all it takes to create change is asking the brave question, after taking a sip of water to wash down the dry ham.