TOPIC: ISSUE63 - "To truly understandyour own culture-no matter how you define it-requires personal knowledge of atleast one other culture, one that is distinctly different from your own."
WORDS: 519
TIME: 00:54:59
DATE: 2010-3-24 13:44:12
Culture, formed through human behaviors ina certain way, owes its distinguished attributes to the particular groups ofpeople and the background in which it develops. It differentiates with oneanother by the particular environment that enriches it. By comparison, we canlearn these disparities more clearly and thus lead to a closer scrutiny for thecause for better understanding. And personal knowledge enables us to noticeeven the slightest variance between.
Culture contains a broad range ofconceptions that permeate in every tiny detail in our life. To thoroughlyunderstand it requires a review on trivial things that may be easilyoverlooked. It's just unimaginable to acknowledge all these details that peopleare now used to. Therefore, a distinctly different culture will be helpful inreminding you how the common things are actually not so common but formedthrough time with human sage respondent to his environment. For example, it iscommon in Britain for people to start conversation with weather. Who would givethis a second thought to realize the underlying culture and environmentrelationship without a distinctly different experience in some other countries?Actually, the weather is variable and people never learn what would happen thenext moment, which makes it an interesting and common topic as the start oflonger conversation.
Personal knowledge would also be requiredbecause without it, only abstract conceptions would make it hard to taste thevariance in a first hand way. As culture is such a broad and abstractconception, you will feel yourself lost to collect any tiny information tobuild up a whole picture. And on the other hand, it derives from our daily lifebehavior, it would be meaningless once it's no longer experienced but learned.Therefore a truly understand requires you to get exposed to the cultureyourself rather than study it from the records of others. Only through thisway, the understanding can be called truly.
Truly understanding also means that youknow how it differs from the others in its own way. Just like it's hard to tellwhether a car is fast or not if there's no given comparison system, it is alsotrue for culture. Its way too hard to tell culture apart from the rest of yourlife when you are familiar with it and no other culture served as a reference.There's no natural ranking or comparison system but a different culture. Soit's always important not to view the whole thing from a single point of view,but to put it into to a much bigger picture, in which it will mark its land andannounce its coming. You can therefore observe it more clearly to know itsstrength and weakness.
To sum up, truly understanding of culturetakes for a personal knowledge of at least one other culture, which is distinctlydifferent from you own. You can observe the variance from a larger point of view;you won't miss the small details that are also a component of the culture. Youcan also by no means truly understand it without a firsthand experience of itby heart.