Cultural Perception and Globalization
What seems okay in one culture, can be viewed as completely ludicrous in another culture. One’s culture is really all about perception and perception can be quite a fickle thing. Each person’s perception of themselves is never quite the same as another’s. Understanding how a person of a cultural group sees themselves, along with why they view themselves that way is important. Then, one should know the positive and negative aspects of how they see themselves. Lastly, globalization in education can positively affect the comparison of cultures.
My brother is definitely the odd ball of my family. He belongs to a completely different culture than the rest of my family. Whereas he’s very free spirited and he doesn’t believe in guns, the rest of us are very conservative and grounded. We love him no matter what, of course, but it is very definite that he sees himself very differently than the rest of us. What he sees as right, we see as wrong. When we get into heated discussions about our points of view, he thinks that it is him versus us. A lot of times, this is the case with people from opposing cultures. It is very common for a person from another culture to see their culture as us versus them because their culture is what they know. It is what they have been a part of and what they have experienced. In actuality, their culture is what they consider to be the norm. An example of this is when Kwame Anthony Appiah said, “People are disgusted by the idea of drinking orange juice that has a cockroach in it, even if they know the cockroach was rigorously cleaned of all bacteria by being autoclaved in advance. They are reluctant to eat chocolate shaped like dog feces, even if they know exactly what it is” (pg. 662). He gives an excellent example of how a person in one culture would see themselves as us versus them. In a culture where