Response to "What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?"

Response to "What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?".


When we encounter a different culture, the general rule, I think, is to be gentle, patient, humble, and discerning.


Gentle so that we don't act brashly and prevent needless actions that will be interpretted in a seriously different way by those of the other culture; patient so that we give enough time to understand what the other cultures' certain expressions actually mean rather than interpret them through the lens of our culture and mininterpret the intended meaning; humble so that we acknowledge the possibility of imperfections of our culture and be ready to learn from the other cultures, and also so that we realize that our culture is not necessarily supreme and thus not impose all of our culture as if it the entire culture was universally dogmatically perfect; and discerning to truly separate good from bad -- in the other cultures as well as in our own.


I said "thus not impose all of our culture as if it the entire culture was universally dogmatically perfect" in the third point because I believe that certain cultures can have parts that hold values universally applicable, thus the values being something that needs to be universally accepted. Or, even if the value is not dogmatically universal, it could be something that is generally better to adopt than keeping certain traditions instead of adopting that - but we should discern which of them are something that should be adopted, and shouldn't be presumptuous and say that everything of our culture is good by virtue of the fact that it's part of our culture. A change in culture at the expenses of certain long-held unique traditions because of the adoption being better than clinging to certain customs apply for both one's own culture and the others' culture, so discernment is not for the sake of defending one ethnic group's traditions over the other in a partisan manner but to promote what's good, whatever the underlying culture may be. And, as good does not demand uniformity in every aspect diversity alone does not mean that the others are in the wrong (and, conversely, uniformity alone does not mean everyone's right). Anyhow, I don't think "I'm right because I'm me and you're wrong because you're not me" attitude is very commendable when talking about cultures.