Culture/Interaction in every day life - Essay Example

Inserts His/her Inserts Inserts Grade (21, 06, Culture/Interaction in everyday life Universal Standards about Human RightThe idea of universal standards eludes many as definition of right or wrong is culture specific meaning that every cultures defines what is right or not in their unique way. The case of female genital mutilation can be a good example here. Cultures, where this practice occurs, approve it and find no issues with it. But for the developed world female genital mutilation seems criminal and brutal.

So how do we develop universal standards about human rights without imposing our own standards on others?The answer is that we develop grounds for agreement and then develop universal standards. We start from something very basic, let’s say murder. Murder is considered bad by all societies similarly there are other activities that are disliked in all cultures. We then develop standards by using logical and rational arguments, and evidence on the basis of common grounds. For example a universal standard about human rights can be that any activity that is putting an innocent person in harm’s way for no logical or rational reason should be banned.

Harm can defined as evidence foreseeable danger to a person in near future. Female genital mutilation is injurious to a female’s health and therefore it should not be allowed in any culture. Nature, Nurture and Stereotypes The clip tells us that stereotypes are common in our society and they are natural in the sense that they have evolutionary roots. In the clip American children were shown to dislike the black guy and the Arab guy. It is because these children have never seen Arabs and therefore they were able to identify with the Chinese person more as the Chinese looked more like ‘them’.

This clip therefore supports the argument by John Dovidio that we stereotype to distinguish who is a friend and who is not. The clip simply depicts what evolution has taught us over millions and millions of years. In the clip children also identify more with the white person as compared to the black person. This is again probably because they have only seen white people around them in their families and their minds have been trained, unconsciously, to identify a white person as a friend. On the other hand the black person did not belong to their ‘clan’ and therefore they were not able to identify with him.

This clip therefore shows that stereotype is natural and supports the idea of John Dovidio.