Read the following passage and answer the questions based on it:
The inheritance of culture is rarely obvious. What we call tradition is often just repetition with reverence, and what we call structure is more often sediment—settled behaviors shaped by forgotten motives. No individual wakes up conscious of the script they perform daily: the deference coded into language, the hierarchy in who speaks and who listens, the legitimacy given to one dialect over another. These scripts are learned by doing, not by knowing. Structures do not enforce themselves through law alone; they linger in weddings, gestures, floor plans, and silence. The most enduring hierarchies don't shout — they whisper, hiding in rituals too familiar to question. When efforts are made to 'preserve culture,' they often freeze one version of the past, assuming it pure and unchanging. However, culture never stood still. It changes, not by denial, but by negotiation. To honor a legacy is not to protect its shape, but to confront what it excludes. If history is architecture, then culture is weather — it reshapes even stone, slowly, insistently. A society unwilling to interrogate its inherited rhythms is not preserving culture — it is embalming it.
According to the passage, what is a problem with efforts to 'preserve culture'?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
Correct Answer: They freeze culture as static and exclude others
Explanation
• The passage explicitly points out that attempts to preserve culture often freeze one version of the past under the false belief that it is pure and unchanging.
• The author explains that culture is dynamic and continuously negotiated rather than stationary.
• Furthermore, attempting to protect a rigid version ignores the need to confront what that tradition excludes, effectively embalming culture rather than keeping it alive.