What we see as culture is really a shared understanding of symbols, beliefs, values, and behaviors. Culture is formed by transitions within society through the influence of the people and media, and those transitions, like when we moved from an agrarian to an industrial society, have influenced the United States. Sociology was born when people began to ask questions like, "What hold us together as a common people", and "What is the nature of our relationships". In the agrarian age everyone was very similar to their neighbors, in work, values, and religion. Everyone was interdependent. In the industrial age dense populations, family dispersal, and specialization began to have a greater influence. Everyone remained dependent on each other, although in a different way.
The fear of society’s failure in the "new age" didn't pan out because interdependence kept people connected, which might be called "organic solidarity". Relationships were a little more formal but relationships still dominated, and sometimes they developed into friendships; rationality still promoted fairness. The post industrial age is full of faceless interactions, virtual connections, hyper specialization, and isolation, but as people have become separated they have developed technological solutions like Facebook to enable and maintain friendships. For instance today's students, unlike previous generations, are very connected with their parents communicating daily via high tech smart devices.
Parish life has also changed. Although people are there to worship they don't necessarily come together as the "Body of Christ". Kinship is missing in the relationship because personal relationships have not been created. Stories are important to keep connections alive, but anti-historical prejudice within some cultures makes this more difficult. The United States became white through immigration limits, the post war economic boom, neighborhood desegregation, and intermarriage, but a Parish makeup is not static and the pastoral responsibility must also change to keep up.
For instance one student commented that the Black population within the Catholic Church (in 2007) was only about 2% and that it will be changing dramatically in the near future. In his Nigerian community there are about 10K Catholics in Los Angeles and Nigerian’s are very devout Catholics. The Black population in Santa Clara County is currently lower than other local counties, but as it grows the church will continue to experience changes. Sometimes the changes are due to real differences, and sometimes the changes are due to perceptions about the differences. Another student commented that what one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces. The instructor pointed out that the church must not change its teaching but it must respond to cultural changes.
We participated in an exercise about values. In the first column I listed my personal values as honesty, loyalty, friendship, love, support, thoughtfulness, respect, love of God, effort, willingness to try, responsibility, generosity, and tolerance. In the second column I listed the values of the Catholic Church as love of God, tolerance, responsibility, love of others, sharing, respect, generosity, understanding, helpfulness, community, forgiveness, and freedom. Then during the discussion I added others such as devotion, salvation, piety, charity, sacrament, stewardship, blessing, denial, education, tradition, connections, healing, justice, prayer, reason, thankfulness, life, and diversity. I listed the US values as competition, success, growth, dominance, power, freedom, individualism, technology, democracy, and truth.
In the last column I listed some of the differences between in the values of the Catholic Church and United States. Primarily I felt that the concept of freedom within the Catholic Church is considerably different than the idea of freedom in the United States. There are also others (many I imagine) such as dominance vs tolerance, God vs "the almighty" dollar, relative truth vs natural truth, and instant gratification vs patience.
Ethnocentrism, the judging of another culture based on your own cultural values was contrasted with cultural relativism, which is the judging of another culture based on their cultural values. Assimilation results from multi generational households, intermarriage, and adoption of local language and customs. Subcultures coexist if the dominate cultural values are shared, and it sometimes results in something referred to as a bonding culture. Counter cultures develop if the dominate cultural values are not shared, which sometimes results in something referred to as a bridging culture. In this case the values that are not shared are at least accepted and understood. Cultural refresh can result when a new wave immigrants come into an existing community that has begun the process of assimilation.
No comments:
Post a Comment