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How does culture affect identity
How culture affects self identity
How culture affects self identity
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In the reading, “Trying Out One’s New Sword,” British philosopher Mary Midgley attempts to warn us of the view against ethical judgment, which is the view that judgments can only be vindicated relative to one’s own beliefs and cultures. Midgley argues that believing in only the customs of each specific culture brings out separation and divides people from understanding and criticizing one another. In this paper, I aim to clarify and describe Midgley’s point of view, which she often refers to as an isolation barrier, and conclude the paper by giving two reasons as to why I believe Midgley’s argument is incorrect. Midgley’s first argument is regarding the moral isolation, which is the barrier past down on us when we stop criticizing other cultures based on the fact that we don’t understand them and in that case can’t judge them. Midgley responds by giving an example regarding Japanese samurais. A samurai’s sword had to be tried out for the sword to work properly, and for it to work appropriately it must be able to cut through someone in a single blow, if not than it would bring shame to the samurai’s honor, upset his ancestors and even let down the emperor. Tests were needed to make sure that the sword worked properly, and all civilians were used to test the sword, and as long as …show more content…
When we critic something to be wicked or upright, better or worse than something else, we are taking it as an example to aim at or avoid. Without ideas like this, we would have no structure of comparison for our own strategies, no chance of earning by other’s insights or faults. In this space, we could form no decisions on our own actions. If we admit something as a good fact about one culture, we can’t reject to apply it to other cultures as well, whatever conditions acknowledge it. If we reject to do this, we are just not taking the other’s culture beliefs
In Barre Toelken’s essay “Seeing with a Native Eye: How Many Sheep Will It Hold?”, the ways in which one culture perceives another and the criteria used to make judgements are explored. Toelken states “I think I can say something about how differently we see things, envision things, look at things, how dissimilarly different cultures try to process the world of reality” (10-11). In essence, Toelken is alluding to how different cultures will interpret their experiences and rituals according to their own set of beliefs and practices. This complicates situations in which the experiences or rituals are not comparable across cultural lines; someone will always be missing an aspect or a significant purpose if they do not try to “see it as much as possible with the ‘native eye’” (12). In other words, one must immerse themselves in the culture they are analyzing, while not comparing it to their own cultural experiences. One must consider all the cultural implications of that specific culture when wondering why things are done a certain way. Toelken provides
People place judgment on one another every day based on differences. Sometimes it is done subconsciously; sometimes it is done on purpose. In the book The House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III, two different cultures were represented; Kathy represented the culture of the western civilization, whereas Behrani represented the culture of Persians. People judge one another based on unimportant things, and get judged based on those same things as well. Two cultures were used to amplify how different their cultures were from one another. Throughout the book cultures vocalized what they did not like about the other cultures by placing judgment on people based on ethnicity, appearance, and status; despite how different the cultures were, they had something in common, negative judgment. In a world where there is so much diversity, the only way for all cultures to get along is to place judgments aside and accept the differences.
Torres Gregory, Wanda, and Donna Giancola. "Part 1: The European Traditions." World Ethics. Eds. Steve Wainwright, Lee McCracken, and Anna Lustig. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage learning, 2002. 142-147. Print.
Each culture has a certain level of ethnocentrism which can have positive and negative consequences. Ethnocentrism provides a feeling of unwillingness to change one’s culture or specific institution by placing them in a box. They can only see things through their specific lens and when something differs from what they know, they believe that it is a violation of the ways things should be. They become ignorant of the cultures that they may be right in the middle of by comparing them to the culture that they are familiar with and grading it on a scale. This causes a level of unwillingness to change institutions within a society because they are the standard. This makes it exceedingly difficult to relate to other people and the world as a whole because when someone is always trying to look at something while envisioning it as something else; they will never fully see the beauty of what they are observing. They limit their own experience for the sake of comfort and security, for the safety found within the familiar. Ethnocentrism is the safety blanket for many people yet the enervation that prevents them from fully experiencing the world and all of its different
In the paper I will discuss how ethics is or is not related to one’s culture or personal beliefs. I will also touch base on relativism as a universal theory and what that means.
If we aren’t understanding of the variances between cultures and the way they communicate verbally, emotionally, and nonverbally this can create considerable issues. The three primary problems that could arise if we don’t have an understanding of cultural differences are the ways we interpret others comments and actions, how we predict future behaviors, and conflicting behaviors of others (“Differences in Culture,” n.d). Culture plays a significant part in peoples lives because it shapes our personal values and views on the world. Having a perspective and understanding a persons culture is important because each culture is different in respect to personal views and behaviors, but it is key to respect their culture because just like us it shaped who they are. The reason we have stereotypes of other cultures is because of this particular reason, we assume that our culture is superior and the correct way to do things. For example, I have heard the stereotype that French people are impolite, offensive, and they hate Americans, but was this stereotype created because of a misunderstanding between cultures? Cultural differences can be educational because it allows us to understand the uniqueness of a culture and allows us to learn new things. Cultural differences allow people to feel a sense of belonging, which can be empowering knowing
Ethnocentrism is when one culture judge’s another culture by the standard of their own (Health, 2001). Stereotypes, biases, and prejudices against other people are all in a sense a form of ethnocentrism (Astle, Barton, Johnson, & Mill, 2014). It is okay to be proud of your own culture, but you need to remember to do so in such a way, that you are not putting down any other culture (Arnold, 2016).
The codification of deviance can vary widely between different cultures, a norm in one culture can be considered deviant in another. For example, the notion of cannibalism has been proved by anthropologists to be a spiritually divine form of ritualistic sacrifice in the ancient Aztec culture of Mexico. Yet in Western culture murder and the consumption of human flesh is considered highly revolting, dealt with by harsher consequences by law than most other deviant crimes. These differences are due to the way each individual society develops their own moral codes. These codes are often defined by cultural ideologies, adversity to other cultures and ritualistic practises which have become accepted, as well established patterns in the development of culture. Lloyd, M 2007 implies this by saying 'we are born into a pre existing (social) order the comes ready made with a large stock of norms and rules we must learn if we are to participate as c...
Disclosing the idea of two extremes. There are people in our society who will let foreigners walk over their bodies by letting them interpret and practice every aspect of their culture without censor. Contrariwise, there are bigots and racists that deny foreigners to practice their native culture, even if it is done in their own privacy. Neither of these idiosyncrasies are supported in this essay as they are both a detriment to the advancement of all societies.
Humans have notably different ethical standards which dictate what is or isn’t correct. Those standards are shared and followed by a group of people. For example, the concept of killing is not unknown. The typical response is to punish the one who commits that “crime,” even if that person was “right” to do so. However, killing may not seem like a crime to some people. Rather, to them killing is necessary for protection. Given that there are many cultures in the world, one can assume that each of those cultures is not like the other. They must all have their own ethical standards. In addition, it is suggested that a person refrains from assuming that one’s ethical standards are superior or inferior to another person’s standards. Cultural Relativism
Social prejudice and a human propensity for ethnocentrism cause observers of a culture other than their own to judge such practices and beliefs as peculiar, yet ‘many of our own practices are peculiar when viewed through the lenses of other cultures’ (Karp, 1990, p74-75, cited in Schultz &...
Clearly, not all persons belonging to the same culture are equal. Each person or society has its own identity, established by factors such as ethnic history, religious tradition, paths, experiences, and experiences. Thats why cultural diversity has a negative impact on a group of people or country. It creates social problems and conflicts that eventually results in uprisings, revolutions, or wars. For example, in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, she explains her difficulties and mishaps that she has to endure due to her Chinese mother and primitive english. The author, raised in USA, has problems communicating with her mother. She writes that e...
It is impossible to conceive of an arbiter to judge such a class of morality. Even though the example is strongly suggestive, that’s not the same as proving with certainty that there are sufficient grounds to say that it should be okay to consider any custom of another culture as inferior.
With the vast variety of cultures in the world, it is obvious that there are numerous differences in beliefs and morals between these cultures. The cultural differences argument acknowledges this and concludes that morality has no objective truth. According to The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Rachels states that cultural relativists often employ this argument by beginning “with facts about culture and end up drawing a conclusion about morality” (17). Basically, cultural relativists would make a statement that compares a belief of one culture to another. They then use the idea that different cultures have different moral codes to conclude that that belief is not right or wrong. An example of this is that Americans use the thumbs-up gesture as a sign of approval, whereas Iranians use the thumbs-up as an insult in which it is equivalent to the middle finger in America. Therefore, the thumbs-up is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to culture. Another example is that
Despite this ever-presence, there are a lot of questions surrounding culture, like what exactly culture, why are their differences in culture and what arises from those differences, and how culture interacts with society to influence one’s worldview. In this essay, these questions were answered. To summarize, culture, loosely defined, is the set of ideas, traditions, and beliefs that shape an individual’s or a group’s behavior and/or outlook on the world (Warf). Different cultures arose from biological, environmental, and geographic differences between humans back when humans were evolving and thereafter. In those differences, many things, both positive like the sharing of ideas, and negative, like the annihilation of a culture, can occur when two cultures meet. Culture can affect one’s worldview in similar ways. It can cause a sort of broadening of the mind, or it can cause stereotypes and even hate crimes. But, no matter what you think about culture, in this diverse, very global society, it is becoming increasingly important to understand what culture is and what one as a citizen, need to keep in