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Cultural Reflection Paper

Decent Essays

Although I have lived in America for over ten years, which is more than half of my lifetime, I still identify my common culture of my ethnicity as Korean.

Knowing about another culture and how they operate does help me understand my culture better. Because we are mostly created by our surroundings in how we represent ourselves, when understanding different culture helps me to view a different type of creation that I have not known before and the areas that our ancestor built upon. An example would be in “The Mystery Fall of Nacirema” when it states, “Exploratory digs have shown that the quality of life in the different areas varied from very luxurious to poverty stricken. The various areas were generically referred to as ottehgs ” we can identify the digs as a way to symbolize operation of the streeters as the environmental dividers, allowing people to realize the place was built by the values and wisdoms of our surroundings. Also, in the article “Body ritual among the Nacirema”, it is stated that the ceremonial aspects associated with the philosophy are unique, by this we can identify the uniqueness and compare, contrast reflect on different cultures.

In comparing cultures, there are distinct differences between cultures. An example would be that the Nacirema culture had its own cult which contained symbolism that meant to provide each family with its own method for altering environment by giving it a private “microuniverse”, producing their desired air. This is a culture that I have never encountered with, which shows a clear contrast between my own culture and Nacirema. Also, how during the rituals of ceremony, every household having one or more shrines to incarcerate in a diseased body is another difference between the era and its culture.

Some behaviors reflected through the Nacirema cultures are, for example, taking health as a dominant concern sympathetically of the people and incarcerated diseased body (Miner 3). Other behaviors that they present is how priests conduct ceremonies to purify the water , or the call the “holy water” within the Water Temple of the community (Miner3). Furthermore, within their different rank of class, in a priestly rank, they lived in areas guarded by electronic

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