ANSWER SHEET

Name: Cathyrene G. Felipe Date: December 1, 2020

Program, Year & Section: BS Math-I-A

Unit II: The Moral Agent

ACTIVITY 1

SOUTH KOREA
The common way to greet in South Korea is
GREETING CULTURE with a bow. The casual bow is a dip of the
head with eyes closed sometimes
accompanied by a slight bent from the waist.
The common way for Koreans to form
DATING CULTURE relationships that seems to surpass the
others: meeting through a friend, the specific
term for this being “ 소개팅 (sogaeting).” This
way you’ll already have at least one
reference, going into dating them, that they
are a decent person, approaching you with
earnest intentions.
In ancient times, weddings (Honrye) were
MARRIAGE CULTURE held in the bride’s yard or house. The groom
traveled by horse to the bride’s house and
after the wedding ceremony took his wife in a
palanquin (sedan chair) to his parents’ house
to live. The groom's family would carry a
wedding chest filled with gifts for the bride's
family. Wedding geese are a symbol for a
long and happy marriage. Cranes are a
symbol of long life and may be represented
on the woman's sash. Pairs of wooden
Mandarin duck carvings called wedding
ducks are often used in traditional wedding
ceremonies because they represent peace,
fidelity, and plentiful offspring.
In modern Korean funerals, no eulogies are
BURIAL CULTURE held. Visitors bow twice to the deceased and
once to the mourner with words of
condolences to show respect. Various
delicacies and wine are served to the visitors.
Instead of burial, cremation, which has a
shorter period of bodily decay, is more
commonly practiced nowadays.
 THAILAND
4. When being introduced or greeting
GREETING CULTURE someone, men say Sawatdee-krap and
women say Sawatdee-kah.
5. Thais greet each other with a "wai."
Foreigners are not expected to initiate the
wai gesture, but it is an insult not to return
the wai. If a wai is not offered to you, shake
hands with men and smile and nod to
women. A Thai businessperson may shake
hands with a foreigner. Offer a wai only to a
person of equal or greater status.
Subordinates should offer a wai first.

In the Thai dating culture, couples can only

DATING CULTURE be intimate if their relationship is nearing
marriage. Thai families will expect the man
to support the woman and their entire
family. He must be financially stable and
capable in bringing that responsibility for
the rest of his life. Thai people that live in
extra poverty believes that their daughter’s
marriage should bring fortune to them. If a
Thai woman likes the man she is dating,
she should bring him home to meet the
family and her family will discuss the dowry
with him.

Thai practices a tradition that called the Merit

MARRIAGE CULTURE Gift. It is a donation to the monks in the
Buddhist temple to hold a ceremony by
blessing the wedding. Others will give gifts
under the bride’s name to the local Buddhist
temple to show respect to her spiritual beliefs.
Most Thai people follow traditional Buddhist
BURIAL CULTURE funeral practices, with some other rites specific
to a region of Thailand. Cremation is the
preferred method of burial for Buddhists, so
the funeral traditions will always culminate
with the burning of the body. The celebration
after cremation continues for 100 more days.
It’s common for a grieving family to play funeral
songs loudly so the event can be heard from
anywhere in a village.
 JAPAN
In Japan, people greet each other by bowing.
GREETING CULTURE A bow can ranges from a small nod of the
head to a deep bend at the waist. A deeper,
longer bow indicates respect and conversely
a small nod with the head is casual and
informal. If the greeting takes place on tatami
floor, people get on their knees to bow.
Japanese couples may hold hands, but
DATING CULTURE typically don’t kiss in public.
Today, the traditional Japanese ceremony is
MARRIAGE CULTURE Shinto-style, performed by a Shinto priest and
held at a shrine. The ceremony itself is very
formal and usually very private, with only
close family and a few guests present. Shinto
shrines, with an attending priest who purifies
the couple and offers their union to the kami
(gods) of the temple. Sake is drunk
ceremonially, the bride and groom each
taking three sips from each of three special
cups, with their parents also partaking.
The majority of funerals (葬儀 sōgi or 葬式
BURIAL CULTURE sōshiki) in Japan include a wake, the
cremation of the deceased, a burial in a
family grave, and a periodic memorial service.
According to 2007 statistics, 99.81% of
deceased Japanese are cremated. Japanese
wake is called tsuya (通夜), lit. “passing the
night”. All funeral guests wear black: men
wear black suits with white shirts and black
ties, and women wear either black dresses or
black kimonos. If the deceased was an
adherent to Buddhism, a set of prayer beads
called juzu (数珠) may be carried by the
guests. People attending the wake or funeral
offer condolence money to the host/hostess,
in special black-and-silver envelopes, it takes
about an hour and a half to cremate an adult
body, 45 minutes for a child, 15 minutes for a
stillborn child. The relatives pick the bones
out of the ashes and transfer them to the urn
using large chopsticks or metal chopsticks,
two relatives sometimes holding the same
bone at the same time with their chopsticks.
 ACTIVITY 2

Activity 2: CULTURAL RELATIVISM (Work in Pair)

Directions: Read, Chapter 2: The Challenge of Cultural Relativism of the Elements of
Moral Philosophy. Choose a partner (your classmate) to discuss and answer the
following questions. (15 Points)
1. What is the meaning of cultural relativism? (5 Points)
2. Discuss briefly the burial practice of the Callatians and the Greeks. Would like be the
Callatians who were horrified upon learning the burial practice of the Greeks? (5 Points)
3. What is a strength of cultural relativism? What is a weakness of cultural relativism?
(5 Points)

Answer:

1. Cultural relativism refers to not judging a culture to our own

standards of what is right or wrong, strange or normal. Instead, we
should try to understand cultural practices of other groups in its
own cultural context.
2. The Callatians ( a tribe of Indians) traditionally ate the bodies of their deceased
fathers, whereas the Greeks cremated the died bodies. The Callatians ate the
bodies out of respect and a desire for their father's spirit to live in them.
Burning their father’s would this be seen as scornful. No
3. The strength of cultural relativism is that it promotes greater
diversity and understanding of ethical differences and reduces the
likelihood of an imperialist imposition of values. The weakness
of cultural relativism is its propensity towards quietism which may
compromise action to protect human rights.
 ACTIVITY 3

Activity 3: BIZZARE CULTURAL PRACTICES (Individual Work)

Directions: Look for two cultural practices which you think are violations of universal
human values and dignity. Copy and Paste a Photo of the bizarre culture. Briefly explain
the cultural practice. And discuss why you consider then inhuman. (30 Points)

1.

The death of a family member in the Dani tribe of Indonesia heralds a vast amount
of emotional and, for women, physical pain. Aside from the inevitable emotional
grief, women of the Dani tribe physically express that grief by cutting off (by
compulsion) a segment of one of their fingers. Before being amputated, the fingers
are tied with a string for thirty minutes to numb them. Once amputated, the new
fingertips are burned to create new scar tissue.

This custom, one of the world’s most bizarre cultural practices, is performed as a
means to satisfy ancestral ghosts, and is rarely, but still sporadically, practiced in the
tribe.

It is inhuman because it violate the right to the person.

2.

The Ainu people, indigenous to parts of Japan and Russia, have a custom of
sacrificing bears. The sacrifice is religious in nature, as it is believed that bears are
gods walking among humans, and the sacrifice of the bear is said to bless the soul
of mankind.

Of course, to outsiders, the practice is rather gruesome. It involves slaughtering a

hibernating mother bear in her cave, raising her cubs in captivity for two years, then
choking or spearing them as a sign of religious devotion.

This is followed by villagers drinking the bears’ blood, eating the flesh, and placing
the skull atop a spear wrapped with the bear skin, which is to be worshipped.
Though the practice is no longer widespread, it does still occur in some areas.

It is inhuman because they kill the bears without knowing their worth just to fulfill their culture.
 Is cultural relativism a threat to morality? Explain. Write your reflection in 3 sentences.
Explain briefly. (5 Points)

Cultural relativism is a threat to morality because there’s nothing you can do even their culture is immoral
you should respect and understand their culture.