The Importance Of Culture

As humans, we are social beings. We do not isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, we gather in groups. The first of these groups being our family, and from there we span to communities and neighborhoods of different kinds, which we joined based on particular interests, such as religion, sports, academics, music, politics, careers, and so on. These groups grow in number until they begin to form counties, states and then countries or nations; all of these people together create a society. Every society is different from the next and each one is unique in its own way. Culture is a subconscious complex we learn every day. It is the way we think, believe, act, speak, and perceive the world around us and it is all shaped and organized by the

When we find ourselves interacting with people from other cultures, or simply see it on the media; we become surprised by the different mannerisms. There is nothing wrong with comparing cultures, in fact, this way we learn more about others and value our own culture more, but we must keep in mind that when comparing, we should adopt an unbiased position in order to understand why other people do things in the way they do, while avoiding unsupported preconceptions. The term that refers to what we are talking about is ethnocentrism, which is the belief that the way that one 's own culture functions is the only proper and correct one, while all others are wrong. In order to avoid making fast judgements or simply incorrect assumptions when studying cultures, always put into practice what is called cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the idea that we must suspend or postpone judgement of other people 's practices until we acquire a full understanding of the culture we are studying, so as to better understand them in their own cultural terms, rather than through our own culture’s world-view lens. It is important to clarify that in this process what it is done is to put off one 's judgement towards another culture, it is neither precipitated nor cancelled. Through cultural relativism it is possible to hold our judgements and perceptions about the culture being observed until we have taken down accurate