This week’s Hixson class was all about culture. I, personally, think that people view
cultures according to many different things.
When I think of culture I think of how you grew up, including where,
with whom (both in your household and out), and also with what. What you grew up with could mean what you
were blessed with from your childhood to now, or what struggles you went
through as well. Also when I think of
culture, I think of how we deal with our struggles. Different cultures sometimes tend to have
different problems, and also deal with their problems differently. Maybe they are very religious and pray to God
when problems arise. Maybe they
concentrate on dealing with problems by leaning on family to help them
out. Or, they could rely on themselves
alone to cope with their problems. These
are just some things that come to my mind when I think about culture.
On the worksheet that Easten gave us on Wednesday, the
bottom question was left for us to complete on our own. The question was, “When you study the items
that are not part of your culture, which ones might be difficult for you to
understand in someone else’s? Some items
that I might find hard to understand would be different religions than mine, different
languages (for the purpose that I do not know them), or ways of living where
they do not use all that is available as an advantage to them. This in no way means that any of these things
are wrong, at all. It just means that I
might have to hear a lot about them from someone of that culture in order to
understand this part of their culture better.
Just as they say, “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked in their
shoes.” But as Easten made the point,
you will never be in their shoes. I will
never be latino. I will never be a male. I will never be an Obama. I think that there are plenty of ways in
which we can understand others’ cultures by learning from them, but we shall
never judge them because we will never know what it is truly like in their
shoes.
Overall, the lesson really made me think. I really enjoyed Easten’s way of teaching the
class and the examples that he gave to help us relate to culture. Good job Easten!
The part about never being in that other person's shoes was thought provoking. I always thought it was a good saying but thinking about how we really will never fully understand their culture is important to realize. It was a good lesson!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brad about never being being in another's shoes. It has made me think about how we can never truly understand someone because while we may experience the same thing, our points of view on how that experience happened will differ. Good job to Easten for pointing that out!
ReplyDeleteI forgot about the being in someone else's shoes statement! That was super thought provoking because I feel like it's a phrase that I use a lot but it's wildly inaccurate if you think about it! I think Easten did a great job of pointing out that we will never share someone's exact experiences but we can still learn from them and respect them!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Eastens lecture this past week. It really shows that there are a lot of cultures in the world. I totally agree that cultures are derived from family and religious attitudes.
ReplyDelete-Kat