HUMAN MORALITY IS UNIVERSAL

Is there such thing as a universal moral code?

Different cultures and individuals have different standards of right and wrong. Moral standards also change overtime in the same culture. For example slavery was considered moral in the United States at one time but not anymore. There is no universal rule that defines right or wrong. Instead, morality is determined by the standards of a person’s own authorities and or culture. Morality is constantly changing. People's beliefs, values and ideas are constantly evolving. What was labeled as wrong 20 years ago like abortions is accepted today, and what is labeled as wrong today, will probably be accepted in the near future. Every culture and sub-culture have different social standards in what is accepted as 'good'. I do not believe that there is an overall moral code in which everyone follows universally, because we as individuals have different ideas in what we believe as moral correct, that is what makes us an independent species. moral codes are relative simply because Laws and what is considered socially acceptable differs so much based on religion or the lack there of. Growing up in a Christian home highly influenced my moral judgment. I feel morality in terms of moral codes is not universal but it’s evident that we are all moral beings. Lawrence Kohlberg believed and was able to demonstrate through studies that people progressed in their moral reasoning through a series of stages. Even though there is no such thing as a universal moral code Kohlberg was able to provide research that humans are generally moral beings.

FITTING IN

People differ in their personalities, attitudes, and values, and an understanding of our individual personality is profoundly important in many cultural atmospheres. How you are perceived and how you want to be perceived differs cross culturally in terms of fitting in. Many people including me have told a lie, acted a certain way or conformed to a group in order to fit in. The key word here is conform, there are several motivations to conform that drive individuals socially and culturally. Growing up I understood conformity; well at least I thought I did. The way I dressed, the shoes I wore and the way I talked was influenced by my cultural surroundings and my struggle to fit in. In the community I lived in growing up majority of my friends where of Jamaican decent and they spoke a dialect that was prominent and popular in our area. I would often speak the same as them in order to conform and not stick out. Time passed but I would still be concerned with conforming. In high school Jordan sneakers were very popular, of course with any popular fashion trend these shoes were highly overpriced but I had to have them. I would save my paycheques and every bit of money I could get in order to buy these shoes just because they were cool and everyone had them. With the use of cultural psychology I know now that a key goal in independent cultural contexts is to achieve belongingness with others, which makes perfect sense when I think about the issue of conformity. 

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN SCHOOL

Cultural Diversity is an interesting topic not only because it possesses many challenges but because it possesses many enhancements to students development and assimilation into the growing cross cultural world. Students now more than ever will need to learn how to interact in a diverse environment. I was always surrounded by diversity, I went to a school in a neighborhood that had a population reflective of its diversity. Many students that attended my elementary school were from various ethnic group, I can go as far as saying none of us really seen color or differences in culture has an issue in our school population, truly! My best friend was Chinese. Going to his house every day and being around his family taught me many things about his culture and he also learned a lot from mine as well. Even in my high school diversity was rampant. A lot of students in stfx where not has exposed to diversity has I was which creates lots of problems when diversity is introduced. The lack of understanding culture or being able to relate to someone different from you leads to social problems. I've met several student who haven’t even talked to a person of a different ethnicity will they came here. Of course it’s not their fault do to geographical location. They always seem to ask me what I would consider stupid questions due to the lack of previous experience with people of diverse backgrounds or religions. It’s important to acknowledge how important cultural diversity is, it enhances the school experience and understanding of the perspectives of children from different backgrounds and helps to aid in functioning in a multicultural, multiethnic environment. 

NOT SO WINNING ATTITUDE

Steven J. Heine's cultural psychology chapter 7 really got me thinking about how i perceive and how these perceptions effect not only myself but others. This is my last year has a stfx student and athlete i define myself had both opposed to one for reasons i was unaware of until now. The concept of compensatory self enhancement comes to play when i choose how i define myself in the stfx community. I am not the best student, i don't get 80's so i tend to divert myself away from my academics by thinking about how good i am in football. Rewind to my first year at X on the football team, like every other freshmen i haven't yet solidified my spot. I was battling for my spot on the dressing roster with 6 other guys and till this day i can remember the comparisons we use top make of each other in order to boost our self esteem. I would disregard other players strengths and only talk about there weakness in order for me to feel better about my performance, i mean we all did it. Downward social comparison is the concept that is used in chapter 7 on motivation to describe my attitude. during downward comparison an individual tends to compare there performance with the performance of someone who is doing worse. i was always comparing myself to people who i felt was worse than me. training camp was not the only situation when downward social comparison came to play. During games when i played poorly i would often look for someone who was playing worse has an emotional scapegoat. Using these defensive tendency was a means of self evaluation that many of us participated in due to our individualistic cultural perceptive.

WHAT MY SUMMER ABROAD TAUGHT ME ABOUT CULTURAL DIFFRENCES

During the summer of 2006 i went to England to stay with my aunt. Before going there i had little knowledge of British people other than what i seen on television. i envisioned a place just like what i have seen on TV but to my surprise i learned many things that contradicted my previous knowledge. My first lesson in cultural differences was when i visited my Caucasians aunt’s grandmother’s house. I was taken to the Attic to play with my little cousins when i stumbled upon these black figuring everywhere, there was lunch boxes with black faces, and shirts. i was confused, my cousins called this image Golliwog but i still didn't understand so when i was alone with my aunt i asked her if her grandmother was racist. She quickly explained to me that in Belgium the image is known as Black Peter. She also stated that there have been much talk about whether or not it's racially induced image. She told me black peter has a complicated history but has she understood it he was Santa's helper who got black through delivering presents through the chimney. Many people especially African Americans assume that is a racially based image and they could be right but i feel the most important part of this issue is teaching cultural empathy. i learned quite a lot about race during my stay, in England it seemed that Race and racism plays out differently than in North America. North America has more successful blacks film stars, which i noticed watching many of their TV programs. It seemed pretty apparent that race is closely linked to class, and there is a lot more mixing e.g. inter-racial marriage. There is a lot of things we don't know about other cultures and we can’t base the knowledge we do have on external sources like i have with television. Other than black peter i learned not all English people have bad teeth, tell terrible jokes, not all English people live in London or live thatched cottages like in lord of the rings. 

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Is humor cross-cultural?

We all know laughter is a cross cultural but is humor. Different jokes illicit different responses and apply differently to different people. The same jokes that are funny in North America may not be funny in other parts of the word. This is due to the only factor that I feel applies and that is cultural conditions. Humor preferences depend on the cultural background of the individual. Even with the smile that seems so universal to us, we cannot assume that the meaning is the same all over the world.  Understanding humor requires an in-depth understanding of culture and these cultural conditions that create a persons or a groups identity, the image above illustrates this point well. Humor is a very easy way to break the ice but we must be aware what each culture finds funny in order to not insult or degrade them. One of my Chinese friend at the school shared that she had difficulty comprehending American humor, this was due to many factors one being cultural conditions i.e. language. But because she brought it up, I was able to explain some aspects of it but I’m pretty sure I didn't do a god job of it. I let her watch some clips of Russell peters, which was a bad idea because he makes insensitive racial jokes which I though was run until that moment. Further research needs to be done in order to fully understand the conditions that leads to failure to recognize humor cross culturally.

CULTURE OF OBEDIENCE

Obedience is a form of social influence in which person acts in response to a direct order. The person usually giving the order is usually an authority figure. As i discussed in my previous blog, my mother practice authoritative parenting and an important aspect to that style of parenting is control. Control comes in various form but in this case the form of control my mother instilled was to be obedient or face the consequences otherwise. I choose to focus on obedience due to the cultural implications it presents. A study done by Blake et al 2015 provided statistical evidence that obedience is culturally distinctive to an extent. The study basically found that parents in the United States taught their kids to be more independent than that of the Indian children thus the Indian children were more obedient to their mothers.  Cultural differences are a factor and transferable to many cultures including my Nigerian one. Growing up my mother was very strict, even up until my late teen years i couldn't be out late. My mother based her parenting on how obedient we were, if she told us to do something it had to be done right away. i modeled majority of my behaviors in retrospect to my mother, she taught all my morals and how to live by them, she taught be respect and many more. I am about to generalize here so please excuse me but within African American families there is an extremely high value is placed on respecting, obeying, and learning from elders or authority figures. Don't get me wrong many other ethnicities hold the same values highly but i based my statement on the people i was raised around and the obvious differences in the parenting styles which do have implication on the child's development.