issue63 [中华龙第11次作业，请大家拍]

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Issue63. "To truly understand your own culture—no matter how you define it—requires personal knowledge of at least one other culture, one that is distinctly different from your own."




To thoroughly understand one’s own culture, should one acquire more knowledge of at least one distinctly different culture from himself? The speaker claims so. I concede the different culture could help us clearly understand national culture; however, a case-by-case analysis should be taken into account.

To begin with, through comparing with distinct ones, a comprehensive understanding would be formed, which could guide us appreciate the advantages of culture and realize the disadvantages of it. One the one hand, though it may profoundly touch our daily life, our attentions would be distracted to other aspects and we may pay little attention to the importance of culture. By contrasting with absolute culture, we could come to recognize the potential agent of it, then adapt our behavior to the social requirements and form our national moralities and ethics. For example, the irreplaceable function and advantage of Confucianism, advocating benevolence and righteousness, could be obviously realized when Chinese individuals compare the knowledge of opposite ones. On the other hand, since the culture has accumulated for myriad of years, seldom of us could positively question the validity of it, instead, only passively accept it. Woman, in many counties, as an instance, were forbidden to work outside, instead, what they could only do was to stay at home, doing washing, sweeping and taking care of children. However, with the continuous contact with others, citizens could gradually find out the illogicality of it and tried their best to break such irrational culture. In sum, to some extent, through comparison with different culture, a comprehensive knowledge about our own culture could be better attained.

Moreover, some cultures in various nations may stem from the same headstream; therefore, to thoroughly acquire the information about them, knowing the similar culture should also be needed. To support my viewpoint, we need look no further than the study of Buddhism in Thailand. Though it may differ from other nations in contemporary, however, we could hardly deny that Buddhism has the same origin in Indian, and has been affected mutually for myriad of years by various Asian countries, such as China, Japan, Korea and so forth. Hence investigating the development and influence of Buddhism in different countries could help us reach a full attitude about it. Besides, if a scholar is obsessed with Japanese calligraphy, a study of Chinese one, the founded place of handwriting, should also be taken into consideration. Therefore, the research of the similar culture could hardly be neglected; otherwise, we may misunderstand our culture.

Aside from the foregoing two aspects discussed above, self-introspection of one’s own culture should be added into the comprehension of the culture. Were we little concern about our own culture, were little efforts made to study it, a ‘putting the cart before the horse' result may be caused. It is hard to imagine a person could better acquire the insight meaning of his own culture, when he usually assiduously researches others but seldom deeply studies himself. Even in ancient times, when the level of modernization is not as high as nowadays, or when the extent of technology is not as advanced as today, individuals could still comprehend their own culture by the continual study of it. To some extent, culture, which has accumulated for a long time and accompanied with the development of one's nation, is an inherent heritage and deserved our much more attention.

To sum up, better understanding of one's own nature, not only requires the comparison of the dissimilar and similar culture, but also requests our attention about our own culture. Only never overlooking all of them, could we truly comprehend our own culture.