Indeed, so far, the most interesting topic I have enjoyed and learned a lot more than I new before, is the topic on 'Cultural Diversity'. I do not know if I was personally attentive or more thoughtful of all that was going on in class, but all the discussions, and videos were very educative and touching to me.
To begin to understand culture, I saw that it is the way different people behave and act which is very peculiar to them and is even carried on to their generations. I noticed that, people have various reasons for behaving in a way that may be due to natural, social, or even personal to them. From all the videos we watched in class such as (Piraha in The Amazon, 30 Days, Borack, and A Class Divided, I have seen that the most important thing to all of them is for a person to try and study the culture of others to make it easier to understand people. I must say I was mostly touched by the lessons the teachers taught in "A Class Divided". I did not know that the values we place on people could really affect the way they perform. I was really surprised to see that the little children were affected by the names their friends called them. It is really a big lesson to learn.
Despite the fact that different people have many reasons for their way of culture, I also think some cultures are very admirable for example, The Opening of Door for others which is practiced in The United States. I see this to be very commendable. A friend once told me that there seems to be even family culture. She said, " her husband's family members all have a culture of not being concerned about a person when you are in their company. However, her family has a culture of being very concerned about doing anything that can affect people who join their company and she sometimes thinks it is to be over concerned. She said her mother was once very concerned about her husband who has a very quite habit when he was in their company thinking that they were boring him with their conversations". I told her I rather admire them for being concerned about what they do to others.
On the whole, we always have to try and learn the culture of other people to know how to live with them. If we do, most conflicts like religious conflicts will be solved.
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I agree with Patricia that this was a very interesting topic and if we all try to understand each other better, it would solve a lot of conflicts.
ReplyDeleteI was not consciously aware of ethnocentism and had not given much thought about judging other cultures,families or even people based on my "normal". I have given this a lot of thought and am trying to be embody a Cultural relativism approach. There is so much we can all learn from each other.
Culture helps to bind people under one umbrella,its good to experience other peoples cultures which encourage to understand one another,like for instance here in America its a country of diversity where we have citizens who came from different part of the world but in turn we all share common American culture, culture study is also a good tool to learn and experience culture side of others by either observing or participate in it, well,although culture has its own impacts in a society negatively or positively is something that is within us as people and citizens of the world,so the best way is to protect and preserve the positive aside of it because they are significant in our daily today lives
ReplyDeleteThis is absolutely true, though it is hard to learn or understand some cultures, it is important to respect people of different cultures from ours, especially people we meet for the first time or those we deal with frequently and more still the ones we work with.
ReplyDeleteI am a Nurse by profession and as a nurse I am required to try and learn as many different cultures as I can. This is so because in this field I meet people from different cultures and beliefs.
The most important point is to understand and respect all people, despite the cultural differences.
I absolutely enjoy learning about interesting cultures. I like to be wowed by things so different from what I am used to.
ReplyDeleteI was a flight attendant for 4 1/2 years. I had an a opportunity to travel the world. Everyday was a vacation as far as work was concerned.
I enjoyed flying to new places, seeing the local people, how they lived their lives, the food they ate how they clothed themselves and how they treated foreigners. If I was to do it again I would still skip out on college to open my wings and fly.
I miss flying to all those places but I would't trade what I have now for anything in the world.
I think I am guilty of judging cultures. Some things are so easy to pass off as " weird" or different, and even some things about certain cultures irritate me. However, I try my hardest to ask and try to understand why people do what they do, and afterwards I have so much more understanding. I think that its important, even if you cant fully understand a culture, to at least try to understand. Also, travel is probably one of the best ways to do this.
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