Cultural Psychology Issues - Essay Example

Cultural Psychology Culture is a very complex matter to deal with. It encompasses almost every major human activity whether it falls under the political, economic or social sphere. However, what is really culture? Culture consists of values, norms, traditions, customs and knowledge that are oftentimes influenced by the political, social, economic and spiritual conditions at some extent. However, there is an inevitable fact that it is the humans who have the innate capacity to determine, construct and implement culture. This fact must be assessed thoroughly because it cannot be neglected and disregarded that the thinking capacity of humans paved way for the conception of culture as a dynamic social construct. How complex is the mind that it is able to construct culture? At the same time, how come that there is quite a problem in determining the mind of a culture? This is quite a difficult to assess. At the first glance, humans, being a rational being, created culture. It is the creative mind that gave rise to it. Despite of the capacity to think, the human’s mind cannot be placed or confined in a culture. The very possible reason for this occurrence is that culture is changing and it is parallel to the changes that human’s undergone. Also, it is not really progress that changes culture but evolution. How is this possible? Critically assessing the matter being discussed, the relation of culture and humans encapsulates the complexities of the interaction between the mind and the emotions. The mind dictates the way humans act and emotions arises from the interaction between other species. Humans, being capable of rational thinking, separate them from other species. That is the most crucial element why they act differently. Since humans are regarded to be the highest form of animals, their capacity to think rationally influences how they act unlike other animals like tigers and dogs which act accordingly to their instincts and natural responses. It is inevitable that feelings oftentimes dictate the way humans interact with other animals because the mind already provided a premise or standards how they act in accordance to the things present around them. To some extent, this provides a dual context that the mind sometimes coincides or clash with our feelings that lead to commitment of acts which can be detrimental or beneficial. This duality can be seen beneficial for humans since there is a thorough consideration and deliberation of the effects of the act not just on humans but also to other animals. How will humans dictate the culture and shape it and relates to their feelings and emotions? It is asserted that culture cannot be equated to progress but to evolution. The dynamic nature of culture is related to the evolution that humans undertake. It is explicitly seen that as humans evolved from pre-historic man to homo-sapiens, the culture changed. One manifestation is the change in lifestyle from a nomadic, tribal culture to a centralized civilization. This provides the condition that humans, in the form of ancient man, has lived a nomadic lifestyle. As they evolved to homo-sapiens which furthered developed the mental faculties led to the development of a civilization. The difference of the two is that nomadic tribes have the tendency, in most cases, to be individualistic and after the welfare of their own tribe or kin while a civilization introduced collective lifestyle that somehow suppresses, represses and dominates the individualistic tendencies to achieve a common goal. It is clearly manifested in this case that the brains of humans constantly developed that made them introduce different changes on culture which eventually changed their lifestyle and manner of living. Act, emotions, habits, values, customs and traditions are oftentimes constant in humans. These components can be considered existent since humans came into this world. Love, anger, lust and other emotions are constantly passed manner of living. The same as acts like fighting, intercourse and the like are clear manifestations of the feelings that humans have. Therefore, these components show how humans make culture because of the interaction between different humans. Their acts and emotions are culturally transmitted. At the same time, a dominant culture gives way to easier assimilation of cultural practices because of the capacity of humans to mimic despite of conditions that make them act individually. How is this different from progress? Progress is focused more on how humans use their mind to change their living conditions and not their ways of life which are culturally dependent. Civilizations are actually after developing or using their mental faculties for general welfare and progress. Most ancient civilizations up to the modern society constantly innovated new technologies to improve their living conditions. However, it does not mean that their lifestyle and values change. They will still carry their culture, along with its components, no matter how their living conditions change for the better or for the worse. Even if the wheel is developed to improve the carriage and transport system, it is still inevitable that humans always transport and travel even if the wheel is present or not. It just made their act easy to accomplish but did not really changed the very fact that there is an innate desire to travel. Progress here entails more of the material flourish instead of the humanist premise. In any way possible, progress leans more on science and technology management while culture refers to the human nature and assessment of it. Another complexity of humans as rational beings is the formulation of universal ideas and concepts; at the same time relaying these universalities in a metaphorical manner. This further separates humans from animals. This gives additional premium on the rational minds of humans since it is capable of proving creative means in relaying their acts and emotions. Metaphors, in most conditions, are connected with the language use and they provide representations on how people perceive certain emotions. This shows that even metaphors are culturally relative since language varies per group of people together with the other elements of culture. At the same time, the evolution of sex, gender, ethnicity and race affect culture of humans. The mind dictates how one individual refers and complies with the prescribed social and political norms with regards to these issues. The prescribed norms and values of society about the aforementioned matters are defined by the behaviours of humans and the genetic codes that resulted to such. The genetic modification that humans had gone through during the evolution process affected the way they acted throughout the process. On a certain level, the traits developed from the start of the evolution like fighting has evolved as well. Fighting somehow evolved from savagery to argumentation. This evolution might relatively be the same to other human activities. This inherently justifies that cultural change is deeply parallel with evolution and progress celebrates the contributions of culture. It has been a common misconception that progress evolves with culture yet the anthropological and psychological evidences and factors that shaped the culture draw a line between progress and culture. Psychological anthropology provides a crucial premise that it is the human’s intellectual processes that shapes culture and highlights the dynamics of it together with the scientific evidences of evolution that furthered justified the uniqueness of humans. To concisely sum up things, culture has its foundation on the evolution of humans and the interaction with the environment. It has shown how the complex construction and intellectual rigor of the human mind created a construct that regards human as the sole arbiter. There is parallelism between the values, norms, customs and traditions and the evolution of humans. The development of both paradigms significantly made humans stand out. They have formed systematic conditions which become determinant of the roles they shall take and the brain becomes a natural tool in flourishing the culture. Culture may hamper progress yet progress cannot hamper the evolution of culture and the constant evolution of man. At the same time, the rational nature of man distinguishes them from animals. Their capacity to think on their own and not relying too much on instincts like the savage animals set humans apart. The development of the brain innovated the way humans have lived throughout time by changing culture, ensuring progress and intellectual fermentation. The brain, together with the other human faculties like the voice made humans special as well. The development of the brain and the other parts of human beings gives them methods to express themselves in a more coherent manner. In the end, the mind of human beings made the culture and society because their consciousness evoked these construct which are still present in the modern times. Cultures constant change cannot confine the mind that allowed its emergence. It is the culture which is chained within the processes of the brain and follows the behaviour of human which it must complement accordingly. Read More