Ethnocentrism and you

What is ethnocentrism? The way I see it ethnocentrism is simply the way in which we analyze other cultures and habits. We compare them to our society and judge their actions based on how we view such actions, not how they view such actions. Every time you hear about some tribe from the amazon and the rituals and practices that they have you often times call them "barbaric", or perhaps "uncivilized". But are their practices so much different than ours? In the way some of them are preformed yes, but the same principles remain. For instance some American Indian tribes would have all the warriors gather around before battle in a tent and would pray while the tent was filled with hot rocks and water would be pored onto the rocks (kinda like a really really intense steam room). When the Indians emerged they believed that the ritual had cleansed their souls and made them stronger in battle. Insane right? Or is it? Tell me what happens before every football game you have ever seen? Where do all the players go? To the locker room. And tell me, what do they do? They all gather around the coaches and they give a pep talk to the entire team.  And when the players leave the locker room tell me, how do they feel? Is their moral high? Why yes, as a matter in fact the moral is rather high. Now what other event that I have mentioned caused high moral? Perhaps the Indian ritual in the tent. So is it possible that the tent ceremony is really just the native American version of the pep talk? It seems logical now doesn't it. But what is the difference in your thoughts of the native American tradition now than when you first heard it? The ritual didn't change, so what did? Your perspective changed. You now understand the purpose to the ritual. Before you had an idea of what it was for, but had no idea how to relate it to something that you have knowledge on. But you now have the familiar ritual of our own to compare it to, the pep rally. With the two different rituals in mind you can compare and contrast them and then finally you can comprehend the idea behind the Indian Ritual. So why do we look at a ritual so similar to one of our own with such negative preconceptions? Its because we don't understand them. People are most afraid of things that they don't understand (examples of this are people that are afraid of the dark, afraid of dogs and cats and have never been hurt by these animals, and often times foreign rituals). But why don't we understand these other cultures right away. We are all human, shouldn't we all think the same? No, in fact we don't all think the same. In fact we think very differently from one another. As it turns out your culture has a effect on every part of you, even the way you think. Some very interesting information has been coming up about this lately. Dr. Nisbett and Takahiko Masuda came up with an interesting experiment to show the different ways that different cultures think. Look at the picture at the top of this entry. Now take a good look, now scroll down the screen until you can no longer see it. What do you remember from the picture? You remember the big fish right. Interestingly enough that is not what people in Asia most often remembered about the photo. They remember the background of the picture. Now why is this. Some believe it is because of the way that we are brought up. As Westerners (Americans in particular) we are taught to look for the big fish, the strong fish, the fish you would want to be if you were in that picture.  While the Asian (particularly the Japanese) most likely describe the background because they are raised to view the whole picture, to look for the ideas to why the picture has the characters it does. Its also because the way Americans and Japanese view logic. As Americans we contradict, and argue over differences. While the Japanese often times try to take more passive approaches and view both sides of a differences (which is ironic considering that the Japanese congress often has mass fist fights within its walls on a fairly regular basses). But as you can see cultural based differences are the cause of our views of other cultures as well as the cause and definition of ethnocentrism.