Our culture is responsible for the way we live our lives. It is a fabric woven into how we live our lives and how we extend our way of living to others. It affects the way we live, think and behave. It is responsible for our foundational beliefs and moral principles that guide our way of life. Culture is important because it explains diversity. The differing societies and diverse populace in the world is an effect of culture. Culture promotes growth and relativism among people who identify with a particular brand of culture. It also brings people together to learn from each other and appreciate the diversity it brings. Culture in summary refers to the collective tenets of our lives (religion, beliefs, art, language, customs, traditions, and way of life) which determines how we live.
We all have biases or preconceived notions about what we believe as being good or bad. Our biases are an effect of our culture. Our culture teaches us at a young age what is considered as right or wrong. What is considered as right or wrong may be entirely different across various cultures. Thus, as we age, these foundational biases influence our decision making since they are woven into our personalities. They are responsible for our level of motivation to achieve something. For example, there are cultures that teach that success is a group effort and thus a person cannot achieve success on their own. An individual who identifies with this cultural teaching tends to be involved in group effort or collective effort to achieve a goal. Such individuals believe in teamwork and corporate strategy. Also, individuals who belong to cultures that teach that success is solely dependent on an individual’s motivation to excel and thus success is solely an individual process, tend to be individualistic or solo-goal oriented. They respect team effort but prefer to attain achievement on their own. Such individuals believe that though they may require external help from people along their path to success, their success solely depends on the decisions they make as individuals.
Our emotional perception is also influenced by our culture. Some cultures teach forgiveness whiles others believe in karma or retaliation. Thus, when we tend to be offended, again our foundational biases are responsible for our first approach in how we choose to handle the situation. Our personalities are greatly influenced by our culture in a very fundamental or foundational way. Yes, we may learn new things along the line from formal education or from travel or from friendly associations, but the principles we learnt and inculcated into our personalities at a very young age (what I call our biopsychological traits) are the foundational building blocks of our personalities. They are what we rely on as “gut feelings” in handling situations where we think we need more than logic to settle the matter.
Also, another importance of culture is how it affects our internal and external behaviour in matters such as empathy, care, remorse or forgiveness. For example, men from female dominated areas are taught from a very young age to respect women and support their needs. Men from these areas of culture are very supportive towards women. Women from male dominated areas are also taught to respect and revere men. Our culture also influences our ability to instantly show forgiveness or harbour pain for a while before letting go. All these are foundational and can change only when we consciously work on the effects of our culture that we deem negative towards our personalities.
Culture also affects our faith (our belief in the unknown). It defines our commitment towards our traditions and morals. Our culture has foundational effects on our morality. Culture also affects how we understand our health. Our health care needs are fundamentally influenced by our culture. The foods we eat, our lifestyle choices are all determined by culture. For example, countries like Japan have a dominant aged populace because of their lifestyle choices which helps the average aged Japanese live longer than the average aged person in a country where lifestyle choices are less healthy. Lifestyle choices include the foods we eat (whether they’re generally healthy or not), our attitudes towards healthcare (whether we believe in old methods of natural healing or surgical/modern medicine), sexual lifestyles, alcoholism, drug use and many more. Thus, medical practices vary across cultures and similar illnesses are viewed and treated differently across cultures. In most indigenous African homes, illnesses like malaria and all forms of fever are treated by boiling medicinal herbs and the warm liquid from the boiling process is given to the sick to drink. Instantly the patient is healed from the fever. In more contemporary homes however, modern medicine is applied to cure the patient. These practices over time tend to affect the way our immune system responds to certain ailments and thus create a record of family history in the way we treat ailments. The nature of our immune systems and how we treat illnesses are passed on from generation to generation. This is why a patient’s family health history and records on how illnesses were treated in the patient’s family are usually consulted in cases of protracted illnesses (especially when there is a record of such protracted illness in the family).
Culture also affects the way we communicate and do business. People from cultures that teach persistence and quick achievement are more risk taking in business relationships. They tend to take big risks in business. People from cultures that teach patience are very careful in making business decisions and tend to take less risk in business relationships. They make an assessment of situations based on logic and not on gut feelings like the former. Scientific research also teaches that culture affects the way we reason and process information. This is naturally evident with cultures that produce more learned and naturally smart individuals than others. For example, certain cultures have produced inventors consistently over a period of years than other cultures that produce inventors occasionally or “once in a lifetime”.
In dealing with people, we must bear in mind that the foundational aspects of their personality are as a result of their cultural background, because culture has an effect on individual character development. This will help us deal wisely in developing people relationships.
