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Jéssika da Rocha SilvaProfessor KalajianWriting Level 519 March 2014

Culture: We See Everything, But We Are Blinded

Many times Culture is like eye color, it’s obvious for everyone except the one with the

eyes. We just can know our own eyes color by feedback from outside sources. That’s what

happens with our culture, many of its aspects are invisible to us, and we just can see it by

contrasting what we know with something else different.

One interesting cultural aspect hard to see is understand our beliefs about food, and the

way that we separate the edible from the disgusting. For example, you probably know how one

specific food is made, but probably in somewhere it is made using a completely different way.

Maybe someone use sugar instead salt, or something like that, to cook your favorite food. You

have a predefined idea about what is “good to eat” and what is “strange and weird”. You use a

specific flatware to eat a specific meal or food. You also have the culture about what is the

correct size for a portion of food. However, even around you, it is possible finding someone with

different beliefs in at least one of these topics.

Another cultural behavior is in our clothes, we really don’t pay attention in what we

reveal and what we hide by the clothes we wear until see something different from our habits. In

many places, it's not hard to realize that people may have completely different beliefs than yours.

For example, in some countries people probably wear more or less pieces of clothes than you. In

this aspect the culture that I am talking about is a kind of “individual culture”. Don’t you think

people outside wear clothes shorter or longer than you? It also reflects in the occasion and the

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environment. I think you probably will not use shorts and a t-shit in a business meeting. It’s

clear, but often we didn’t pay attention to that.

The hardiest cultural aspect to see is our way to maintain physical contact with people

around us. Many times we don’t know why we behave in a specific way instead another, it just is

stuck in our habit. Think about you behavior for a while and try to define how near you are from

someone during a talk. Do you think it is a rule for everybody? No, it isn’t! In many countries

people feel uncomfortable talking very close with someone. You have a “ritual” that you follow

every time you know someone, it can be a shake or hold of hands, a hug, a face kiss, but people

in others places may think it is not appropriate. In a way easier to understand, you can think

about your different relationships, you probably have a way to greet your family and a different

way to greet your boss.

As you can see, a careful evaluation of some cultural aspects such as food, clothes and

social interaction can easily show how we are blinded in our culture. I believe many of our

cultural practices are no more than a routine that creates a blindfold around our eyes.