If we want to discover what man amounts to, we can only find it in what men are -- and what men are, above all other things, is various. It is in understanding that variousness. . . that we shall come to construct a concept of human nature that, more than a statistical shadow and less than a primitivist dream, has both substance and truth.

Becoming human is becoming individual, and we become individual under the guidance of cultural patterns. . . which give form, order, point, and direction to our lives. . . [But] we must. . . descend into detail, past the misleading tags, past the metaphysical types, past the empty similarities to grasp firmly the essential character of not only the various cultures but the various sorts of individuals within each culture, if we wish to encounter humanity face to face.

--Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture