Culture

I had never thought very deeply about culture, but after reading the articles I have gained new insights about what culture means, I always knew that the culture we inherit was something that was being forced upon us, and that seems to be the overall definition of what culture is, that would be a set of beliefs that people have come to agree with, and trough the passing of time, these beliefs become larger and end up absorbing a whole population and giving it its own identity, there are many factors that affect cultural beliefs, like for instance the geographical location of a group of people would make them more likely to develop a different type of cultural belief i.e. (the culture of a hot dry place like Africa will be very different from that of a cold place like northern Europe), culture also has a lot of influence in religion and vice versa this leads to many different rituals and set of beliefs that define the human experience.
There is no better or worst type of cultures, they are all just a result of the environment in which they are developed, nevertheless there are people who do belief their culture is superior from that of others, we see this with the usage of the term “high culture”, that implies that people who share this type of culture has some better taste in arts, cuisine, literature etc, sometimes this belief of a superior culture can lead to terrible crimes, like the many genocides that have taken place throughout history.
The different types of cultures will also reflect in the way that people speaks, for example most Asian countries have very polite way of speaking, to the point that they will never say no to you, this can lead to difficult situations when two different cultures collide, like on the article gives the example of an American woman talking to a Japanese hotel representative and how out of respect she just wouldn’t say no.
the difference in cultures also shows itself in the use of gestures and facial expressions, some gestures that are appropriate in our culture could be highly disrespectful on a different culture, like also some greeting mechanisms, for example in my country its very appropriated for a men to kiss a woman when they meet, but here in the United States that could be interpreted as intrusive or disrespectful.
In conclusion my views on the meaning of cultures have been greatly enhanced because of reading these articles there are some things that I already knew, but I have also learned many important cultural differences that could come up handy someday like for instance, never to give the thumbs up in Iran.