The mind not only perceives how things are, but also thinks about how they could be:
it does this regarding the physical world, and it does it concerning man;
the gap between how things are and how mind thinks they could be
in the physical realm, it attempts to fill through technology  --
culture is its attempt to bridge this gap in men.

Via the eyes do men see how things are in both the natural world and in the life of man, and driven by the nervous system’s instinct to survive is the mind made to
picture how man’s material environment could be changed in ways that would
make same more probable  --  voila!  --  technology;
and fueled by an indistinct model imprinted in man’s genes
is the mind given a vague picture of how man could be changed for
(what inherently seems to it) the better  --  hello! --  culture.

This mentally perceived gap regarding man’s physical environment and the tangible aftermath wrought therefrom is straightforward and understood by everyone,
but the gap the mind conceives concerning man and what results therefrom
is by no measure clear and direct;
there can hardly be imagined a more confused and tenuous connection between
a premise and an outcome than this one, as it is perceived by
the same state of consciousness responsible for its existence.
Changing the channel of a stream to irrigate a field, thus bridging a gap between
the amount of water a crop is presently getting and that which would
improve its growth and chances of survival is a technological effort
whose purpose is clear and in which the activity of physically digging
directly leads to the desired outcome,
but man’s attempts to re channel the energies that fuel his intangible inner life  --
to close the gap between how he sees himself to be
(how be behaves, speaks [and from that presumably] thinks)
and the hazy picture genetically imprinted in his mind of how he could be,
have (over a known span of six thousand plus years)
resulted in no success equal to that of an irrigation ditch.

The multitudinous manifestations of his culture (from religion to the various arts)
is mind's striving to close or even eradicate the gap it irrepressibly perceives
between how man  presently acts, speaks and thinks,
and the somewhat blurred picture of how he could be with which he is born;
one cultural creation for example, christianism, says that changing into a fully functioning christian will close the gap betweenwhat you are now,
and what you could for the better be (same with communism, capitalism, patriotism, humanism and any isms that man may in the future mentally conjure);
in a quite valid sense: everything in man’s cultural life
(those activities not directly concerned with immediate physical survival)
is an attempt to bridge this indigenously felt, then mentally perceived gap;
every non technical book ever written; every movie ever produced;
every myth ever told of a hero who underwent a grand transformation;
every political, social and economic model ever imagined;
every painting ever laid to canvas,
and every bit of critical gossip ever passed, one man to another,
are intangible plugs conceived of by the mind in its ceaseless effort to bring together: how man is, and the notion (in it ingrained) of how he could be.

The results of participating in these commonly available cultural activities
are clear to a clear-headed man;
and though they plainly satisfy most, they do not, a scant few,
and the reference is not to those common men whose wiring & programming makes them play the role of an angry critic of what they say they see as man’s inability to bridge the gap, as is claimed to be the raison d'être of his cultural institutions,
but to those with a certain outlier nervous system schematic who are not angered by men’s collective failure to bridge the gap, but rather fascinated by it  --
intrigued as by a puzzle that to most seems insolvable,
yet one clearly as natural to man as his breathing;
these are those who the majority label, mystics  --
those with belief in metaphysical knowledge which would actually eradicate the gap, and really merge the mind’s pictures of how man is and how he could be.