Summary: Whatever Happened To Western Civilization

Culture affects people’s ways of thinking and their views of the world. People face the challenge of developing an understanding of culture that both captures diverse backgrounds and shared systems of attitudes and feelings. Individuals of different cultures not only live different lifestyles but also have a unique and distinct way of thinking. Advocated to learn and appreciate numerous characteristics of everyone’s cultural background. From John David Morley’s short story, Acquiring a Japanese Family, he compares and contrasts how the Eastern and Western cultures embrace the different behaviors, lifestyles, and the qualities of living. People act and behave differently in daily life between the East and West. Depending on how one was raised,

There will always be an aspiration to have more stuff by creating an identity from the possessions and belongings we own for the luxury and comfort everybody wishes for. For example, Sugama had won a ticket to own and possess an excellent government-subsidized apartment even after he had lied about living with his grandfather, when he really was not. This shows that Sugama aimed to live at a high societal level just like everyone wishes to be although he has wrongly used his grandfather for an extravagant living. In the reading, Whatever Happened to Western Civilization, by Richard Eckersley, he states that in both cultures, there are “cultural shifts towards excessive materialism and individualism in a matter of greater vanity, selfishness, and greed, or simple the manufactured desire to have more stuff” (Eckersley, 5). This shows that although there are differences between the East and West, one main relationship is the goal to be well off where ever he or she may be from. Another relationship that is essential and significant in both cultures is family. Sugama never really had a well standing relationship with his grandfather in Morleys short story since he essentially only used him for housing, and once the grandfather died, he felt doubtful for expending his existence. In that case, Sugama botched to put family first and as Eckersley states, “there is a common perception that, with individual freedom and material abundance, people don’t seem to know where to stop, or now have too much of a good thing” (Eckersley, 3). Knowledge about the East and West cultures provides an insight and a better sense of the cultural interactions