The Influence of Culture
Each of us has his or her own perspective to define human beings. I believe that what defines human beings can be different from one person to another because everyone has different experience, personality and lived in different circumstance. Actually, We can’t say that all human beings are inherently selfish, aggressive and antisocial; or that all human begins has an innate sense of morality and justice. Let me give you an example, if a person born into a poor family, this person could have three choices, the first choice is to be a thief, murderer and loser person, and that will lead him to prison. The second choice is to be a persistent and successful person, and that will lead him to have a rich and great life. The third choice is to stay as he is, without any changes in his life. So, the choice depends on the environment and the circumstance of the person; we can say that the personality can be formed by the culture. I believe that all human are innately pure, and they have the choice to stay pure or to become evil. Human beings are very complicated creatures because god gave us brains and minds to think, so our behaviors are not predicted. Unlike human, animals are programmed to behave the way they behave. The culture that we are living in is the main factor that form our behavior.
It’s interesting to know that there are many cultures in the world that are different from my own. When I say culture, I mean the language people use, the religion people practice, the activities people do and the clothes people wear (in some cultures people don’t wear colthes).
In Benedict’s article “The Individual and the Pattern of Culture”, she said that, “Human Nature” is structured by the human being and the culture he or she is living in. Many things can be influenced by the culture such as language, tradition, personalty and behavior. For example, the language of the people who are living in Texas State, they speak English, but they have different accent and they use different words than the people who live in different states. Similarly, in my country, there are two main dialects which are Bedouin and Urban. Each dialect gives many glances of the life’s style. Bedouin’s people live in the desert so their dialect goes to be unclear. In another side, the urban people live in cities, so their dialect seems better and obvious enough. Thus, both of them speak Arabic. But each of them has a feature that separates them and makes those people feel comfortable in which they want to introduce themselves. So people who live in different culture have different perspectives, experiences, and knowledge. To prove my point, I translated this poem into Arabic.
“Little baby Oh so small
One day you will be big and tall
I watch you while you laugh and play