Article Title: Culture | Date Created: 06/10/2012 | Date Updated: 06/10/2012 | Language: English | Category: Other | TranslatorPub.Com Rank: 179 | Views: 18599 | Comments: 0 | Ratings: 1, Average Rating: 6 (10 Max)
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That the world is moving towards embracing a more global culture is becoming an accepted fact. We live on a planet where all countries are linked by economic, commercial and cultural ties through the rapid development of global communication at the forefront of which are the internet and mobile phone technologies.
Historically speaking, this process of acculturation is not new; it can be dated to the time when different groups of human beings made contact with one another, either through trade or possibly conflict. It can therefore be stated with some certainty that close encounters with alien cultures in nothing new. What is new is the pace at which the cross-fertilization of cultures is now taking place. In the past, the speed with which people connected and exchanged was extremely slow and its impact may not have been significant for many decades or even centuries. Even in relatively modern times, for example in the Europe of the 13th and 14th centuries, influence of Arabic learning on European culture in fields such as mathematics and medicine took many decades to spread. Such is the speed of communication today that information and ideas can be disseminated in a matter of seconds and have almost instant results; the so –called ‘Arab Spring’ is a perfect example. If one want to good deep down and probe into the meaning and implications of all this sequence of historical events that human civilizations have been through by the sheer necessity and force of things; one cannot possibly separate any kind of close encounters that might occur with any other social systems and the potential for it to generate and involve a cultural exchange. The only obvious question that comes to one’s mind is to what extent each culture will have an impact on the other and the extent to which each culture is ready to open up to the other. One would say without a shadow a doubt, based on the cultural, technological, social and historical development of things, that there will always be a cultural exchange between any given cultures that come close enough to each other and will impact on one another in a positive or negative way. What makes this impact to be positive or negative is has to d the mindset of the source and target cultures that will accept to undergo this process of cultural cross-fertilization and the degree to which the two moral - social systems are critically ready for this experience meaning that if any two given moral - social systems decide to open up to each other and the outside world; They have adopt a critical thinking approach with regards to anything that they might consider as being ‘strange or alien’ cultural concepts to them. They are required to be aware of the dangers that any such encounters can have and will have and try to find way not alienate the other party but try and be selective and decides whether to adopt fully or partially adopt anything which is new. Basically, we are here before a very basic physics law that is of cause and effect and what any system of values need to do is to be able to discern what good and bad , what can help it advance and what will pull it down and what can be enlightening and eye opening.
To conclude, one can say that since we are living in world that is restlessly going toward becoming a global village we are doomed, as human beings, to communicate more and more and the only way out for is to try to find common grounds upon which we can build and learn how to appreciate our differences and accept them. We should learn how to see the wealth of our cultural diversity and to learn from each other. This is because no human soul and no value system can claim that it is the best ever. Allah has created us different and that is not the product of a coincidence but it is the work of a mastermind Who want us to seek the truth about Him in looking into our differences.
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