In order to break through the limits of our culture it is important to experience other cultures that are out there. Something as simple as eating food or listening to music from another country can make a huge impact. On the other hand, if you wanted something more extreme, visiting other countries and observing their cultures first hand would broaden our perception of culture infinitely.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Creatures of Our Culture
I agree with Ruth Benedict. I think that we are all creatures of our culture. From the moment we are born, we are taught to act and dress a certain way. For example, boys are always dressed in blue and never in pink, whereas girls are almost always in pink. This goes back to the nature versus nurture argument a little bit. Are our personality traits products of our surroundings or have they been with us since birth? I think a good example of this would be feral children. In extreme cases when a child is devoid of any human contact with the outside world, or even family, they do not know how to speak or have any signs of relating to a culture. These rare cases really go to show how much of an impact the outside world has on a person relating to one culture or another.
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It's interesting that you bring up gender as it relates to being a creature of culture. I once watched a documentary about gender in a child psychology class. In the film, they did a study where they examined the interactions of adults with infants and toddlers. Whenever the adults were interacting with a girl, the octave in their voice would become higher. The people in the study would also change the statements they said to the toddlers depending on gender. For example, with girls, the people would say things like, “Aren’t you a pretty girl!”, but with boys, they would focus on how tough they were, or how they need to act like a big boy.
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