The Pervasiveness Of Culture

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Culture has an undeniable affect on almost all aspects of our lives, yet to grasp at it, our fingers pass through the blackness of empty space. The pervasiveness of culture is part of what makes it so invisible. The human mind makes the apparent hidden through the process of desensitization. Odors that once reeked of, exposed to for a sustained period of time become imperceivable. Such is culture. Which brings about a problem, how do we see the problems of our culture if the very presence of culture is undetectable? For us to see the flaw in anything, we must first establish a normal or ideal in our mind. From this perception of normal, the flaw can then be defined based on this standard. Therefore to spot the flaws our ideas in our own culture we must examine our base assumptions and ideas in the light of a foreign culture. No one culture is perfect, where one culture excels another may be deficient. In studying cultures we allow ourselves to broaden our ability to communicate effectively and see not only the flaws in others, but our own flaws as well. …show more content…

This is because culture is the shaper of logic itself. Culture sets the ground rules and boundaries of logic in a given society. Since how we think is based on logic, and the product of shared thoughts is communication, you can easily see how important an understanding of culture is. Especially when navigating the intricacies of effectively sharing ones thoughts. Culture impacts not just our use of words but, the very definitions of those words themselves. Gay today and gay yesterday for example carry two very different meanings. Gay for example use to mean happy, today the meaning has somehow shifted to mean homosexual. Think about that, a word that use to describe an emotion, now describes a sexuality. One might speculate that the re-purposing

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