CULTURE IS IMPORTANT KEEP YOUR CULTURE ALIVE
This is a piece of a paper I had to write for school and thought it is a good share for all of yall :-)
The most important topic I think that will best allow me to prepare for my future career and my personal life understands culture and its differences. Culture is defined as the system of learned and shared symbols, language, values, and norms that distinguish one group of people from another (35). I see the world of culture as very important because I am not a relativist I think that there is a right and wrong, therefore being a better or worse culture. Recently I have started to learned about other cultures in different parts of the world and I find almost all of them to be repulsive in one way or another, and even subcultures of my own culture I find to be a bit annoying as well. The term ‘ethnocentric’ may come to mind but that is untrue of my specific belief because I do not believe in ‘systematically’ (defined as forcibly promoting a culture via violence) having a preference towards one culture. I believe that voluntarily surrounding myself with people with my culture is a more efficient and correct way of describing my views. On page 37 of our textbooks they point out that culture is not necessarily related to or based on our ethnicity. This also is very true, I only associate with people of my culture but the ethnicity is irrelevant to my decision of people being around me.
The reason culture matters to me so much is because when I look around the world and see countries like Pakistan who are about to execute a man for blasphemy and Facebook helped them do it, this disturbs me very much and I do not want to associate with people of that culture.
I also look at other cultures like in East Asia, and the main problem I have with the culture is their abuse of dogs because I am a very passionate dog lover. This if brought near me would spark a rage in me and I think that it is wrong, being tolerant of something you think is wrong is not really being tolerant it is being weak and refusing to stand up for what you believe in. In East Asia they have a very strict culture as well, even though the top freedom countries are over there like Honk Kong, Taiwan and Singapore they are the exception not the rule. You have countries like China and Russia who are relatively authoritarian compared to their freedom loving counterparts, which actually were influenced by western culture and adapted the culture greatly. Then you look at Japan who has a very high suicide rate, although I admire their work ethic they have with 9-13 hour work days, the suicide rate shows there is something wrong with the culture going on. This is also true of white males in America committing suicide at record rates.
A culture other than mine though that I respect greatly is South American culture, mainly Chilean culture. They are very free and have a great amount of diversity of that, also being higher up on the Freedom Index than America in almost every category. They have a strong family unit which is my core beliefs that once you get married and have kids you are stuck together for the sake of the kids because the family is more important than the individual when you bring a new life into the world.
In conclusion I enjoy cultures that value freedom, the family, and a relatively relaxed but hard working society. This tends to be South American cultures and western European cultures that seem to adopt these more than East Europe, the ME, and Asia. This is important to me because now that I realize the type of culture I want to live around I can decide with effectiveness to move to the place I want to move to, which will probably be Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Chile, or Costa Rica.