By converting the natives, the Europeans opened up trade agreements as well as land reforms. Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, described his first contact with the indians, explained how as soon as the French had reached the New World called the natives “wild men,”(Document 2) and to remedy this, they attempted to press their religion, Catholicism onto them. An image, in Document 4, depicts a scene where the natives appear to be praying on their knees at a bounty of food and gifts. Salesmen, whose purpose is first and foremost to make a profit, first entice with small gifts, and then proceed to take their money. This is exactly what happened with the natives.…
Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th century a philosopher, once said, “God…does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.” While Richard J. Mouw, in his book When the Kings Come Marching In, would agree that God redeems sinners he would also argue that God desires to redeem the entire cosmos. God desires to redeem both human souls and the cosmos because both have been infected and distorted by sin. After a careful reading of Mouw’s book, it is possible to piece together a summary of the main points of the book while formulating a response to Mouw’s explanations and his life application. When the Kings Come Marching…
The Natives of the New World gave the impression of wanting to be saved from their savage and barbaric ways; thus, through forcing conversion to Christianity, the Europeans believed they were justified in not just giving them the gift of religion, but also giving them the gift of morality…
My Own Cultural Clash All parents have high hopes for their children, they want them to become a: lawyer, doctor, engineer, or something along those lines, most adults just want their children to be successful. My career was practically chosen for me as early as the 3rd grade. I stood above everyone in the crowd, literally, I was 5’4”. I’m tall and black, so everyone had assumed I was either heavily into some kind of popular sport, but stereotypically the question I was most frequently asked is “Do you play basketball?”. What made it even worse is that my mom expected to me play basketball, in fact that’s what she would tell my whole family.…
I grew up in an upper-middle class, white, Catholic family, in the middle of suburban Cary, North Carolina. Culture was a term introduced in school with pictures of exotic places and bright wardrobes; history lived inside textbooks with stories of war and migration. My fourth grade family history project contained one piece of information: my great-grandmother sailed to the States from Italy in 1904. The little history and culture introduced by my family showed me who I do not want to become. While the teachings of Christianity shaped me into a compassionate, open-hearted person, I struggle to accept the dogma that followed it.…
Manifest Destiny, a strong sense of American nationalism and vision of social perfection, was an aggressive expansion movement that diminished the presence of other civilizations throughout the country. The introduction of Europeans in early America was the foundation of Manifest Destiny, as it was when the major seizing of the native civilizations’ land occurred. Forwarding in time to 1800, there were many acts of imperialism that contributed to the development of the expanding ideology of Manifest Destiny. A sense of American nationalism is a motivator for expansion.…
Nwoye serves as an example of a cultural collision having a beneficial effect, since becoming a Christian drastically improved Nwoye’s mental state and protected his physical health. Throughout the novel, Okonkwo regularly torments his son in order to fulfill his necessity for Nwoye to be absurdly masculine. Also dealing with his internal conflict between personal morality and gruesome cultural traditions, Nwoye was in desperate need of emotional resolutions. The arrival of Christianity in Umuofia provided Nwoye with an unfamiliar and benevolent spiritual figure, as well as a community with ethics similar to his own. In Things Fall Apart, author Chinua Achebe uses Nwoye’s character development to convey that a cultural collision may be able to positively alter one’s life.…
Edward Said once wrote that the concept of exile is “the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place.” While his general claim is that exile “can never be surmounted,” Said adds that it can potentially be an “enriching” ordeal. In the African tragedy, Things Fall Apart, author Chinua Achebe presents the impact of such a detrimental experience through his protagonist, Okonkwo. Throughout the novel, Okonkwo’s struggle to gain respect and improve his social status eventually consumes him when he is challenged by the cultural differences and the conflicting beliefs of masculinity. When Okonkwo endures the physical exile bestowed upon him in his motherland, Mbanta, he is also mentally exiled from the other tribe members.…
Cultural collisions between different groups of people that are forced to live together are bound to happen, especially if those two groups have completely different ways of life. Chinua Achebe depicts what cultural collision can do to two different groups of people in his novel Things Fall Apart between the main character Okonkwo and the colonizers that come to his village, Umuofia. Okonkwo, an aggressively over-masculine, hot-tempered, traditional man, comes to face his old traditions and ways of life crumbling and falling apart before his very eyes, as colonizers plague Umuofia with their religious beliefs and customs. Cultural traditions are deeply rooted in old cultures but when something or someone interferes with these traditions it…
Cultural change influences the social assets of a person or a community. It can affect people's behavior, perception, or the way they think. America, in particular, is a weird nation because it is an outlier (Watters 492). In Ethan Watters’s essay, “Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind,” Watters depicts the importance of culture shaping human development, focusing on the psychological aspects that cultivates the human mind. If America decided to change its cultural view of itself, it would be more aware and accepting.…
1. The sociological perspective is a way of viewing and approaching a particular phenomena occurring between individuals and the structures of the society in which they live. It includes three methods, or practices, of approach: beginner’s mind, culture shock, and sociological imagination. The similarity that these three methods have, are that each involve opening our minds to new ways of viewing the world and the processes through which we conduct our daily lives. Beginner’s mind is a method of approaching the world through the absence of preconceptions.…
Over the context of this paper, I will observe and implement my own culture through a magnifying glass to get a perspective of an outsider, and I will compare an aspect of another culture from an insider’s perspective in order to become more aware with the motivations behind the practice. Specifically, I will discuss the condition of higher education in America, contrasted with the practice of polygyny among African families to show how Sub-Saharan Africans view as “normal” in a larger context, and while revealing what may appear different and oppressive to and outsider, although it seems to be a complex practice to an insider than an outsider would realize. Part 1: An etic view of African American race from an outsiders perspective is believed as religious and demonstrates a unique lifestyle. To examine these facts other cultures are taken into consideration to accurately without prejudices towards African Americans. According to the (Journal of Psychology, 2000) culture and beliefs about time is compared among Black Americans, Black Africans, and White American showing the racial views.…
How difficult it is to change a culture where project management is perceived as of low status and something to get? In this project, it is extremely hard to incorporate the required changes in the culture of the project management during the implementation stage for the reasons that, the introduced changes will impact on the mindset of the team engaging in the project. The process of making any changes will affect the chain of command in the project and this will affect the set objectives of the project. Changing the needed skills for new hires like the existing leadership skills, communication skills, their political sensitivity and the attitude that they posses towards the project will definitely affect the progress of the project and this at last affect the outcome of the project thus making it inappropriate to make these…
Violence is the aggressive behaviour showcased by an individual. In general, being violent will always create more problems hence, lead to self-destruction. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the European especially the British were at peak of its power. They were controlling half of the world. By that time Africa was one of the major continents that was colonized by the Europeans.…
Culture is what keeps people in a certain areas connected and is used to make a sustainable society to live in. Although the main goal of a culture is to unite the people some fall sort and still have separation between the people. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, A Nigerian village named the Ibo village is described very well but Achebe does not shy away from showing the reader how the villages culture and traditions divide the people more than unite them. Some of the villages ideas only separates the people rather than unite them which cause the culture to ultimately fall in the end.…