While reading through Chapter 3, on cultural evolution I was
particularly interested in how culture persists. Heine (2012) explains how one
could test cultural persistence. It was looked at in relation to
subjective-well being, this refers to how satisfied one is with their own life.
The researchers went ahead and tested different nationalities to see the levels
of subjective well-being. Then by testing American’s of descent of these other
countries they could see whether the cultural influence of subjective well
being persisted. So for example if they tested someone of France, they would
then test a French American. The results from their study suggested that
culture does in fact persist. This
seems very interesting to me that if my level of subjective well-being was
reflective of the culture in which I belong to, that if I were to move
somewhere else in the world it would most likely remain around the same level.
When I consider my subjective well-being I see it as a reflection of the
culture I belong to. I feel as though I was brought up into a very privileged
culture, my parents did everything for me that they could and provided me with
many opportunities, such as attending university. With all the experiences that
I’ve had to date I would consider my subjective well-being to be very high. I am
very content with the opportunities I have received. I find it hard to believe that if I were to go to some part
of the world that is very underprivileged and experiencing tough times, whether
from natural disaster or war that my level of subjective well being would
remain high in generations to come.
I
found particularly interesting the comparison of baseball in Japanese culture
and in American culture. The game is the same, the rules are the same but how
they play the game is reflective of their cultural beliefs. For example the Japanese belong to a
collectivist culture. The collectivist beliefs are evident in the game in that
they Japanese tend to play the game with much more sacrifices of the individual
for the better of the team, for example sacrifice bunt hits. If leading in a
game the Japanese will try not to raise the score too high to avoid making the
other team look poorly. This story about how culture persists seemed to be very
applicable to my cultural self. I
always grew up playing sports and it was a big part of my life. I was very competitive;
I would always due whatever it took to win. The way my teams played was primarily reflective of
individualistic cultures, such as the Americans in the baseball story but there
were some similarities to the Japanese cultures. Our practice times resembled
the American’s, we would only practice a few hours a day as opposed to the
Japanese who spent the majority of the day practicing. We always had very
sportsmanlike coaches who would want to make sure we played a clean game as
well as never beat a team by an embarrassing amount. Sports can be a key way in
which cultural persistence is demonstrated. It seemed as though in my days of
playing sports that there was both individualistic and collectivist trends to
our team.
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