Cultures Collide

As a whole, humans are very arrogant creatures.  We believe that our way is always the best way.  However, when we view life this way, it causes conflicts among those around us.  As read in "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism," different cultures have different morals, so no one has the right to judge those people with a different culture.  The Eskimos, for example, marry, but the men marry more than one wife.  They also share their wives with guests, and the dominant males can have any other men's wife as he pleases.  The women can leave their husband for a new partner, as well.  In the United States' culture, this is viewed as crazy.  We believe that you should marry one person at a time, and sharing is considered cheating.  Eskimos also believe that killing infants is okay too.  One woman gave birth to twenty children but killed ten at birth.  This is viewed as absurd in our culture as well, especially since we have so many couples struggling just to have one child.  However, it is not our place to tell the Eskimos that they are wrong because their culture is different from ours.  If we did try to tell them that they are wrong and then try to change them, there would probably be some conflicts between us and the Eskimos too.  That is why we should respect differences among each other.  Cultural differences is also shown in Things Fall Apart.  When the missionaries come to Okonkwo's village, they work at changing the ways of the African people.  They build a school, push Christianity on the people, and start "righting" some of the African people's ways.  For example, Okonkwo's people believed that having twins was bad, so they would leave then babies out in the forest to die.  The missionaries disagreed with this and started saving the babies and brought in the mothers if they wanted to join them too.  This was considered evil to Okonkwo's village.  As time went on, the missionaries pushed their ways onto the people more and more making many of them angry.  Because the missionaries were pushing the "right" ways, conflict arose.  However, if the missionaries had just shared their faith with the people of the village instead of pushing their culture onto them, they may have brought more people to Christ and gotten along better with the Africans.  So as it is seen, if people would have respect for the different cultures around them instead of forcing cultures onto others, we would have more peace... and we would probably make some new friends in the process. :)