For centuries people were enclosed in the world directly surrounding them, locked away from most diverse places in the world due to lack of communication and intermingling with other cultures. Despite the world’s advancements in technology that allows people from all over the globe to communicate freely with one another any time of the day through cyberspace, this separation from many years ago caused a “cultural unconscious” in individuals that still affect how people interact with each other from different backgrounds even today in 2015. Therefore, people who submerge themselves in only one culture are blind to, and sometimes even opposed to, living their lives in a different cultural fashion than they did as they developed at a young age.
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Now, with the global village, one’s neighbor can be anyone around the world that shares similar ideas and interests. For example, a teenage girl living in the United States may live next door to another teenager who she has absolutely nothing in common with, but she may have a lot in common with another teenage girl living all the way in South Korea. This common connection could be similar music tastes or maybe even a love for the same author, and in an age of technology, these two can be united together and form a relationship through social media sites such as Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. As this friendship develops, these two can learn each other’s cultural norms and therefore learn new ways to process information and understand the world around them just by communicating on one singular interest. Jennifer J. Cobb, author of “Cybergrace: The Search for God in the Digital World” elaborates on the global village and how it can birth these new social interactions. She explains that “Computers, and the world of cyberspace which they give birth to, offer a domain of disembodied mind – intellect, emotion, experience – for us to explore” (Cobb 161). Being able to communicate with others regardless of their location allows people to use their mind, more specifically their emotions, experiences, and intellect, to speak instead of their bodies and spoken words. With just a click of a button, a whole new …show more content…
Dean Barnlund describes the assumptive world as “the world each person creates for himself is a distinctive world, not the same world others occupy. Each fashions from every incident whatever meaning fit his own private biases” (Barnlund 53). These private biases usually come from one’s surroundings and the people they interact with on a daily basis, which hides people away from other ways to learn and communicate with people that have different assumptive worlds. This assumptive world that every individual has is essentially the world inside one’s head; it’s the world that provokes emotion and solves problems. Amy Tan, author of “The Language of Discretion” is forced to broaden her assumptive world when her parents move from China all the way to the United States, where cultural norms are significantly different and utterly contrast with what Tan always knew. However, this force gave birth to new ways to solve problems and understand the world through an American’s perspective as well as a Chinese woman’s perspective. Tan explains, “To this day, I wonder which parts of my behavior [are] shaped by Chinese, which by English. I am tempted to think, for example, that if I am of two minds on some matter it is due to the richness of my linguistic experiences, not to any personal tendencies towards wishy-washiness” (Tan 664). She assimilates her two cultures
Now, with the global village, one’s neighbor can be anyone around the world that shares similar ideas and interests. For example, a teenage girl living in the United States may live next door to another teenager who she has absolutely nothing in common with, but she may have a lot in common with another teenage girl living all the way in South Korea. This common connection could be similar music tastes or maybe even a love for the same author, and in an age of technology, these two can be united together and form a relationship through social media sites such as Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. As this friendship develops, these two can learn each other’s cultural norms and therefore learn new ways to process information and understand the world around them just by communicating on one singular interest. Jennifer J. Cobb, author of “Cybergrace: The Search for God in the Digital World” elaborates on the global village and how it can birth these new social interactions. She explains that “Computers, and the world of cyberspace which they give birth to, offer a domain of disembodied mind – intellect, emotion, experience – for us to explore” (Cobb 161). Being able to communicate with others regardless of their location allows people to use their mind, more specifically their emotions, experiences, and intellect, to speak instead of their bodies and spoken words. With just a click of a button, a whole new …show more content…
Dean Barnlund describes the assumptive world as “the world each person creates for himself is a distinctive world, not the same world others occupy. Each fashions from every incident whatever meaning fit his own private biases” (Barnlund 53). These private biases usually come from one’s surroundings and the people they interact with on a daily basis, which hides people away from other ways to learn and communicate with people that have different assumptive worlds. This assumptive world that every individual has is essentially the world inside one’s head; it’s the world that provokes emotion and solves problems. Amy Tan, author of “The Language of Discretion” is forced to broaden her assumptive world when her parents move from China all the way to the United States, where cultural norms are significantly different and utterly contrast with what Tan always knew. However, this force gave birth to new ways to solve problems and understand the world through an American’s perspective as well as a Chinese woman’s perspective. Tan explains, “To this day, I wonder which parts of my behavior [are] shaped by Chinese, which by English. I am tempted to think, for example, that if I am of two minds on some matter it is due to the richness of my linguistic experiences, not to any personal tendencies towards wishy-washiness” (Tan 664). She assimilates her two cultures