Is your own culture the best in the world?
...is a question that always has puzzeled me. Do most of people think so? Why? Why not?
I´ve decided to ASK - so if you see this - welcome to take part of my little poll down at the page. Scroll down as far as you get and you´ll see it. Then just click the answer that suits you the best.
THANKS!!
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5 comments:
Very interesting question!
My first reaction was that my culture is the best. Or my senses told that.
But when I used my logical thinking, I have to admit that I can´t put different cultures in certain order. Impossible, who can do that?.
There can be very happy and balanced people in such cultures, which I think are full of chaos (in my opinion) and I believe are "worse" that mine.
Maybe I feel the mine is best because mine is familiar to me with its positive and negative properties.
Every unknown seems to be worse until you begin to know it. Thats weird. I believe, that is just build inside of us. Of course, we could do something to change it.
Young people, elder people, people lived before us, people living in other cultures. We certainly do/did have different manners but after all, we are quite similar from basics. Maybe when seeing something new, we too often just want to highlight the differences, and not the similarities.
Sorry about the long comment but as I mentioned earlier, this is a very interesting question :)
Thanks Alja and keep up the good blog !
Thanks for that, anonymous!
I recongnize your way of thinking. I also hate to admit that it´s hard not to feel that the own culture purely is the best... but then again...how do you know that? When you have only seen one.
For me thinking that your culture somehow is superior to others is a scary way of viewing things and of course one basic root to conflicts throughout history.
There are so many things that influence the development of culture: climate, history, religion etc. For sure Finnish culture and customs wouldn't work in warmer countries, when so many customs come from climatological reasons.
Then there are some things that for me really ARE better and worse things in different cultures. For example equality and basic human rights in my view makes some cultures at least nicer than others :)
There are things I really appreciate about Finnish culture and long for when living abroad. In Norway again, there are things that seem much nicer than in Finland. As a summary, all cultures are a big mix of good and bad things. Some depend on the viewer, others can generally be viewed as good or bad.
For me, one of the best things in life is to explore and learn to appriceate the good things in cultures you previously haven't known. And basically, behind all our strange cultural frameworks, I think all human beings are quite similar in good and bad.
A great question though, this was the result of me trying to limit my answer. Keep asking those tricky questions!
Thanks Martin!
You guys talk a lot...:)
And that´great!
I absolutely agree with your thoughts. And when reading it like this...it seems like the only human way of thinking.
But stil...why... why does it seem so hard to realize that other cultures out there (maybe even those that don´t practise equality and human rights) might be as good (or even better) than your own?
Or can they?
How do we measure what a good nation with a good culture with good people...?
You get long answers when you ask so hoplessly complicated questions ;) And you're right, we are talking about things that aren't measureable.
If we exclude this human rights and equality issue from the discussion, I must say I actually respect and admire cultures that are much closer to nature than ours (in a classical view primitive cultures).
In our "developed" consuming-driven society the basis of economy is based on getting people to search for happiness through owning more and more things.
I've known for years that more stuff won't make me happier. Happiness comes from the social part of life. Of course some parts of our development like medicine and health care is nice (not to mention the development of bicycles ;).
I'd like to keep that little part of our development, but stop running after things (and I'm no saint, I own looots of unnecessary stuff).
So, where is this my happy "good healthcare" but less consuming utopia? I continue travelling (my personal way of contributing to global warming).
From Mother Earth's point of view, our culture at least doesn't earn so many points.
I could write a book about the subject, but better stop here. Maybe should continue studying sociology and skip this consulting business..
Keep asking complicated questions :)
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