INDIVIDUAL TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT

# 1. TOPIC: CULTURE
1. Identify the concepts and notions about culture which are present in this text (at least
culture, globalization, values, traditions, cultural shock, ethnocentrism). Explain and
justify your answers.

As it can be seen in the text through the expression of the shareholder Barry, the investors
remained very nervous throughout the inspection of the master of the Chinese martial art. So
that a more than noticeable concern for the situation at stake is glimpsed, as well as a tense
feeling of the environment for the group of shareholders due to the ignorance they have about
the political and social cultural orient mechanisms that the Chinese teacher receives as a
heritage of his culture.

This leads to a cultural clash between East and West that translates into a feeling of
bewilderment on the part of Americans at the perspective and inspection of the Chinese master.
Shock, which is intrinsically caused by a context of globalization, which goes back directly to
the frontal clash between cultural forms, as well as thought and tradition. Such as is narrated in
the fragment, since we see how in a apparent principle objective interpretation of a certain fact;
as is on a priori way the optimal verification of a building for the performance of an activity and
its subsequent authorization, falls into the deep and endless well of subjectivity, where, in this
case, there are two ways of interpreting an entity which confront with each other, and I may
reiterate, a priori, of an objective estimation fact.

In conclusion, I will mention a concept that, although it has already been subtly reviewed, I
believe will bring us a greater emphasis.
We speak of ethnocentrism, conceived as that sociological doctrine that judges the patterns and
mechanisms of a specific external or foreign culture from the point of view of a culture taken as
a reference or starting point, which acts as a judge over this first one. In the text we find a clear
example of ethnocentrism when the scouts and listeners observe the Chinese master; judging
their curiosities, giving their opinions on their methods and distrusting their criteria, under the
gloomy orchestra that plays the symphony of the climate of tension of the clash of cultures.

2. Select one object (around you) that represents something important about your culture.
Attach a picture and describe the cultural meaning of the object (linking the product to
the cultural values which it embodies).

Within my sea of ​ideas and concepts whose inheritance corresponds to the undoubted genetic
code of culture in my subconscious, and in the way in which it shapes my thinking and my
reasoning mechanisms, even subconsciously, I have chosen to choose an entity more than an
image that is the fundamental pillar of my thinking and of all Western culture: God.
Since you are asking about an object, I will stick to it and focus on all the cultural references and
monuments that Christianity and religion in the West have provided to the cult and adoration of
God, or rather, when it comes to Christianity, Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth; figure that is the
fundamental pillar in the foundations on which our entire cultural background is based, which is
interpreted and revealed in the sacred writings (Bible).

If we go back to ancient times, we could explain how the origin of religion in general can be based
on the deep need of human beings to give themselves answers, that is, to resolve their main
dilemma: the fear of death. Under this fear, human beings used myths to respond to issues that
affected their daily lives; such as the discovery of fire to warm themselves, rain to water their crops
or the sunset translated into night.
Over time, the human being conceived and refined these universal existential questions and at a
certain point, he channeled them into a prophet; a mentor to follow and who promised a kingdom in
heaven, beyond this world, and who established with his masses and rulings the moral and ethical
principles of subsequent societies in most of the West and the world until our contemporary times. .

However, and after most of the story, Nietzsche published The Gay Science in 1882, where he
declared the following statement: God is dead. The death of God means a radical critique of the
religion, morality and metaphysics on which Western civilization has been built up. For Nietzsche,
the disappearance of belief in the Christian God will change man's orientation, distancing him from
the transcendent and supernatural world in order to center him in this world; the only real one.
Nietzsche's criticism of morality is directed at Christian morality; a decadent morality, the result of
resentment. Nietzsche in turn speaks of the inversion of values, the German philosopher
distinguishing between the morality of lords and the morality of slaves.

If we go back to my particular case, I was born in a place where a strong faith and feeling of
religiosity is processed. A place where Holy Week was declared of national tourist interest for its
processions and passion, and where they don't ask you if you would like to be baptized or not.
People's behavior and ways of judging and thinking revolve around that Christian morality about
Nietzsche spoke of, and it turn around the figure of sin, a fact that differentiates good people from
bad ones, that distinguishes between faithful and unfaithful, and that, in a more hidden way than at
the birth of Christianity, condemns to the cross those who remain far from dogma.