INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Gary Althen, the author of the first core reading, defines values as ideas about what is right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, and so on" (par. 1). Discuss major differences you have noticed in values and assumptions while a foreign country or community that is culturally different from where you grew up" Did anything seem "wrong" or undesirable"?

Values are established in each culture by a common agreement among its members. According to Gary, it doesn't mean that all of them share the same opinions or assumptions of what could be bad or wrong. An example of that is the different religions that exist in each community, besides the multiple perspectives that each person have of what is bad or wrong. 

In other cultures as Jewess, their philosophy is totally opposed to ours. For example, the fact that their religion does not allow men to touch a woman or greet her shaking hands because of the concept of faithfulness to their wife that they have, in our country, could be seen very strange and unthinkable because of our traditions and different behavior. In our country, the concept of what is correct or incorrect in the field of faithfulness is more open-minded. Men and woman seem to have a different concept of what fidelity is as we can see every day infidelity and deception cases. 

But those differences are not only seen among cultures but also among people that belong to the same community. For instance, the opposing thoughts about arranged weddings in India. The story about the “coward” in the reading material is a good example of that. Although arranged marriage is an old tradition in their community and most of them accept that cultural fact, some of them may not share it. Those who are against the established rules in their country are sometimes called rebels. But the reality is that nobody has proved that there is an absolute truth of what has been seen as correct or incorrect. Most of those traditions are imposed by the religion based on their own interests, that most of the times are economic.

Although there are a thousand differences and multiple conceptions and values that exist around the world, the real truth is that there is not a truth. We are citizens of the world and we need to learn to live together with our differences, respecting one another’s, but not imposing our opinion to the rest of the people. That should be the principal rule for all the communities that exist in the world.