Thursday, May 25, 2006

Irony in Cultures

After having been exposed to more than one culture, I am able to notice some distinct features in each of them. American culture, or should I say western culture, has individualistic and community-centric people. And people of India (Eastern culture) are family-centric. Let me clarify my point here:

Western people care a lot about themselves and how government governs them. They will keep track of government policies made and their impact on people's lives. But they will never like to find out who stays next to their house, I mean, they don't care much about their neighbors. They will perform great amount of community service but (at the same time) will also not hesitate to destroy their own family i.e. divorce their life partners if they think they are unhappy. They maintain safe distance with relatives as well. While eastern people don't give a damn out what government is doing for their benefit and they will not hesitate to filth their surroundings. But they know who their neighbors are and keep great relationship with them. They also tend to maintain a regular healthy relationship with their relatives. So which approach is better. In ideal world, it would be better to maintain a balanced individualistic, familty-centric and community-centric approach. The interesting part would be to come up with satisfactory explanations for why cultures emerge in different ways..

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