Question

Answer the following question in at least 600 words. No Plagiarism please

What issues do we face when it comes to understanding other cultures? How can empathy help us understand different cultures and identities? Why might this be important?

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.

(Answer) In the field of anthropology, human groups are studied meticulously and extensively. In order to make sure that researchers get a glimpse of the group’s everyday life, it is essential to fit into their normal circumstances and everyday lives. Anthropology involves the life of the researcher becoming one with the lives of the members of the subject group.

This simply means that in order to understand each other, it is necessary to be open to observing and learning about different cultures. In other words, it is necessary for an individual to get to know different tangents of the world with an open mind as opposed to recklessly thwarting anything that is different from their own beliefs.

The major issue that is faced when an individual is presented with different cultures is that, they might be weary of something that isn’t common place to their own environment. It isn’t necessary for us to live like anthropologists and completely be submerged in the life of an obscure tribe in an unusual part of the world. However, it is necessary for us to mimic their method of understanding. The best way to understand something is to get to know it better.

When one over comes the difficulty of accepting the differences around us, it becomes easier to listen and understand. Understanding things makes it easier to feel compassionate about it. Being compassionate entails being vicarious or being understanding of one’s joys, sorrows and beliefs. One does not necessarily have to practice apostasy in order to be compassionate. For instance, if a person might feel the pain of a prick on the finger, it is not necessary for us to be pricked to understand the pain. Rather it is necessary for us to remember the times we have felt pain and assume that the person feels the same distress that we do in times of pain. This helps us to have a certain emphatic temperament around people.

If we want to understand cultures better, we would need to notice the similarities that would help us relate to it. Most cultures respect mothers, most religions entail praying for the needy, most cultures celebrate feasts with food and other such similarities help us understand cultures and identities.

This is an important habit to inculcate. Within a small household, it is common for a family to have the same religion and culture. Even within this small family where every individual is of a similar background, there might be different ideologies and opinions. Therefore, if people who are brought up to be similar would still have differences, it would be safe to assume that surely people of different backgrounds would also have different ideologies. Since heterogeneous ideas are inevitable in the world, we as human beings should be able to agree to disagree. In other words, it is ok to be a part of different cultures, so long as we come to a consensus on how to disagree in a civil manner.

So long as an individual’s freedoms are not being usurped by following a certain way of life, it would be best to simply be understanding of their cultures. This is the understanding that several world forums and organisations are built upon. The United Nations is one of the best examples of such a world stage. It is where members, representatives and leaders of different nations can attend council and simply talk to resolve their differences. This makes them more understanding, compassionate and emphatic of each other’s cultures.