This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week three: Cultural Differences.
“As members of society, most of us
see only what we expect to see, and what we expect to see is what we are
conditioned to see when we have learned the definitions and classifications of
our culture.” ~The Forest of Symbols
Cultural
differences can make it hard to find similarities between oneself and other
people from around the world. To the
unaccustomed eye these cultural differences can seem strange, odd, or just
wrong. We are quick to judge cultural
differences without truly understanding the meaning behind them. This is not
exactly a fault of our own. Each person
grows up learning a certain set of values and beliefs and when these are
challenged by something that seems new and different it is natural to brush
them aside as unusual without acknowledging the fact that to others they are
entirely normal. We do this often times
without even seeing the similarities.