THOUGHTS

Culture, for me personally is as mentioned in class, complex and diverse. It is something which involves the interaction of many different ideas and topics such as gender roles, language, traditions, beliefs, social interactions etc. Being born into a family with parents originating in El Salvador I can personally say that culture is complex in the sense that the way one thinks about situations is different versus how persons of other cultures would think. For me, being raised with the ideas of 2 completely different cultures, gives me different outlooks on life. Thus, I would like to point out that culture involves an outlook on life, certain opinions and ways of handling certain situations or events in life. Although this may be obvious to some or most, I am unsure, I think it is important to point out, because it is the differences in the way of thinking that creates different traditions, beliefs and entire lifestyles and without understand the way a people thinks, the culture can never TRULY be understood. Thus the inability to understand a way of thinking is what makes a culture complex to those viewing it “on the outside”. Some people believe that human behaviors and ideas are a result of features like genes and hormones; this is known as biological determinism. Personally, I feel that the ideas, thoughts, views and therefore behaviors in a culture are due to cultural constructionism. This is the theory that explains that human ideas and human behavior are due to the result of learning. In a culture, an outlook on life is learned.