Though I agree with the idea that the culture is as you describe most of the time, I think you'd be more correct if you reversed your statement. The all around, underground geek who's into HGTG, LoTR, ST(NG|DS9|etc), etc, etc also tend to dig Perl. Why? I would say it's b/c Perl is an archetype of the OSS ideals - perlmonks being a huge example of this. If I had to distill what I think is unique to the Perl culture that makes it stand out, I would propose two things.

First is the general agreement of true Perl gurus (not hightening myself to that rank here as I still need to learn this lesson) that it is always best to use the right tool for the job, not just Perl for every job. I think the newbie misconception is best summed up in the Geek Code's statement that "I use Perl for all programs of less than a thousand lines." What if sed was the better choice? I invite anyone to cruise around and find all the nodes where high level monks offer non-perl solutions. The list is long.

Second is the willingness to help the newbie sharpen their skills without retribution. More that one person already noted this, but I find this is unique to Perl and the languages it has inspired. Even Java, born and bred in the afterglow of Perl, does not have this flavor to it.

"A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the
seriousness one had as a child, at play."   --Nietzsche
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