Filial piety is a value rooted in Confucianism, and individuals in many eastern cultures would have been exposed to such concept while growing up. For many raised in a culture with such value ingrained in them, filial piety is not just a responsibility but a moral obligation that cannot be compromised. The basis of filial piety lies with children, having received from parents (e.g: food, life, education), have an obligation towards them. Even if they can never repay their debt to their parents fully, they can repay a small part of it by obeying and serving their parents and by making them happy and proud. In these communities, it is impressed upon members that the ability to uphold filial piety is an indicator of responsibility and maturity. On the other hand, failure to do so could be met with the feeling of shame and also negative social judgement.
This might seem all too extreme and foreign to individuals if they had not been exposed to the eastern culture (e.g:
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Mussweiler and Damisch (2008) showed that extreme primes could lead to contrast effect as most exemplars will appear lackluster next to an extreme standard. For instance, instead of using the stories from 24 exemplars of filial piety, in which many stories demonstrate extreme acts of filial piety (e.g: a father buried his son alive so that he can feed his mother), a video promoting filial piety in today’s context could be used instead (e.g: ‘Father and Son’ advertisement). It is more relatable and shows a more modern understanding of filial piety. The traditional acts of filial piety could be construed as inhumane or foolish in contrast and may prime other unrelated concepts. To ensure the prime used is indeed priming for filial piety and is not an extreme example of it, a pretest could be conducted in which participants rate its relatedness to the concept and its
In her book, The House of Lim, author Margery Wolf observes the Lims, a large Chinese family living in a small village in Taiwan in the early 1960s (Wolf iv). She utilizes her book to portray the Lim family through multiple generations. She provides audiences with a firsthand account of the family life and structure within this specific region and offers information on various customs that the Lims and other families participate in. She particularly mentions and explains the marriage customs that are the norm within the society. Through Wolf’s ethnography it can be argued that parents should not dec5pide whom their children marry. This argument is obvious through the decline in marriage to simpua, or little girls taken in and raised as future daughter-in-laws, and the influence parents have over their children (Freedman xi).
In Western society and culture, religion and morality have often intertwined and they have reflected their values onto each other. Today it is sometimes impossible to make a distinction between the two, since their influence has transcended generations. In modern Western culture, religion and society preach conformity. In order to be a “good” person, one must conform to the values imposed by the church1 and state.
Staying strong to your culture’s beliefs despite the differing values between other cultures can deprive some people of what others may be free to do, but for some it can cost
Religion in the Middle Ages takes on a character all of its own as it is lived out differently in the lives of medieval men and women spanning from ordinary laity to vehement devotees. Though it is difficult to identify what the average faith consists of in the Middle Ages, the life told of a radical devotee in The Book of Margery Kempe provides insight to the highly intense version of medieval paths of approaching Christ. Another medieval religious text, The Cloud of Unknowing, provides a record of approaching the same Christ. I will explore the consistencies and inconsistencies of both ways to approach Christ and religious fulfillment during the Middle Ages combined with the motivations to do so on the basis of both texts.
There are fundamental differences between Eastern and Western cultures and the meeting of these cultures has had several effects, both in Asia and here in the US. Overseas, you can see the juxtaposition of American pop culture on the older modes of Asian thought and society. Here, New Age religions find new excuses in Asian religions and philosophies and Anime is appears regularly on Saturday morning cartoons. Often, this juxtaposition becomes turbulent as the younger generations are caught between two seemingly opposing cultures. As a result, crime rates rise with the integration of Western ideals and culture into Asian society. This is true here in America too as the first generation of Asian-Americans are born and brought up by Asian parents, with Asian thinking, in American society and culture. This conflict manifests itself in our history as a nation as well as in modern universities and businesses.
Have you ever wondered why religion and piety was the utmost important during the Middle Ages? The day Charlemagne rule at the height of the kingdom he along with medieval people from monks to common believers showed piety or had sought to live a more godly and religious life.
The moral code of a society is established by many different factors. A large amount of different social guidelines are derived from religious doctrines. Due to the evolution of religion, social guidelines lack an absolute. The absolute of piety is what Socrates seemed to be searching for. His questioning of Euthyphro may have been due to his innocent curiosity. It is also probable to assume that Socrates knew that there was no true definition of Piety, and that his overall quest to find the universal of piety was used more as an example. He may have been expressing critical thought and encouraging society to understand the variation of individual perception, and the distinction of human existence. In my opinion, piety cannot have a universal meaning, due to the variation of the human race. The understanding of human fallibility and differentiation of human existence, in my opinion is what Plato meant to express with his construction of the theory of forms. I also believe that representing the lack of human similarity in terms of a pious action, was the reason for Socrates’ severe questioning of Euthyphro.
“Filial piety …was an essential element in ancient religion and thus in ancient life in general,” says Donald Holzman, historian and writer of The Place of Filial Piety in ancient China. He states that it “came to be seen as having absolute value [in China].” One of the largest results of filial piety was that it was the main influence in China’s cultural phenomenon of ancestor worship, a statement which Holzman fully supports. Altho...
culture rather than nature . . . [they] are neither timeless or transcendent” (264). In other words,
Throughout history we have seen that family values have been one of the most important aspects of societies around the world. Although these values may be different from one another, we can see that it is a ma...
Euthyphro first defines piety as to what he is doing now which is prosecuting his own father. This definition did not satisfy well with Socrates. Socrates explain that the definition is more like a pious action. He wants to know the form itself that makes pious actions pious.
The word "pious", despite its relatively common usage, has an ambiguous and debated definition. In the Euthyphro Socrates and Euthyphro argue the meaning of piety until Socrates eventually asks "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods (10a)?" These two possibilities describe very different concepts. The former implies that everything holy has some innately right quality which causes the god 's to love it. Furthermore, this quality exists separately from the gods, meaning that if there were no gods the pious would still be pious. On the contrary, the latter implies everything that is righteous is only so because the god 's love it. In other words, the gods decide what is pious and unpious. After much reasoning Euthyphro concludes the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious (10d).
On the other hand, high culture is not only readily unavailable or inaccessible but it is also not
Orientalism is essentially the perceptions that Westerners have that distort and exaggerate the people, lives, and culture of the Middle East (Maira, 2008: 320). In Orientalism, the person defining the “Other” tends to benefit from that definition, whether it be viewing the Other a negative light and assuming oneself to be above it, or viewing the Other in a positive light and identifying oneself with that (Shay & Sellers-Young, 2003: 31). Belly dance, in turn of Orientalism, is derived from fallacious notions about the Middle Eastern culture that were implemented in the west to elucidate belly dance as a practice of the western world (...
In the end, what we learn from this article is very realistic and logical. Furthermore, it is supported with real-life examples. Culture is ordinary, each individual has it, and it is both individual and common. It’s a result of both traditional values and an individual effort. Therefore, trying to fit it into certain sharp-edged models would be wrong.