Cultures

I've had the opportunity to travel to some amazing places. With that, I've had the opportunity to experience a lot of different, amazing cultures. I've gotten to eat their food, live in a typical home there, and get immersed in their cultures. 

And I loved it!

An interesting question was posed to us. That question is this, "Are all cultures equal in terms of being right and wrong, good and bad?"

Personally, I don't believe that any culture in this life will be perfect. Each culture has some good and some bad to it. In each culture itself, there will be families that are the epitome of the good parts of the culture and other families who maybe aren't. Everyone is raised differently and I think that's a part of what makes each culture the way that it is. We all interpret things differently and have different beliefs that help drive us to do what we do. 

I'd like to give a quick example of a difference between cultures. Last year, I had the opportunity to go on a humanitarian trip to Samoa and this was one of the times that I was really immersed in the culture. We spent a lot of time with the families there and got to know the people fairly quickly. One thing a few of us in the group noticed was that in all of the families the parents hit the kids. That was just how they disciplined and got them to do what they asked them to do. Don't get me wrong the people are so loving to everyone and generations of the family all live together or right next to each other because their culture is so family oriented. They all help take care of each other. It's just part of their culture to hit the kids when they're misbehaving. I don't know if all Samoans are like this, but that was something that we observed in the area that we were in. In America, hitting children is often looked down upon and most people don't believe in that method. A lot of research has been done here on physical punishment and so we have changed our culture to where a good majority of families no longer use physical punishment. 

Each culture is so different and I think that it's so wonderful and valuable to learn about the different cultures! One thing I learned from spending time with the Samoans is that family is so important and we are so blessed to have everything that we do. There's always a reason to be happy! They call their simple homes "paradise" and I think we should all follow their example and make our own homes paradise as well!