Different people bring out different sides of you by

People "differente from us": Introduction

marianafilipajesus — 2019-11-20 10:01:44 UTC

Here's something new for those who are most inattentive: there isn't just one culture on Earth, there's many of them! In fact, it would be almost impossible to know all of them. Why? Because culture is built according to the place where you live and the people you live with.
Not being able to know all the traditions and customs is such a shame! Those are what mainly differentiate us from each other, making each one of us special in our own way.
Portugal, our country, as we all know, has a big diversity of cultures and ethnicities. However, it isnt a perfect society because along with acceptance there are also bad attitudes and behavior towards other culture people.

In this way, as it should, there are multiculturalist countries, that is, a country that incorporates ideas, beliefs or people from many different countries and cultural backgrounds. For example, when people of different cultures come together to celebrate and share their different traditions it is a multicultural celebration.

But it is no surprise that some people don't think that diversity in cultures is a good thing.
Their selfish attitudes of false superiority lead to, for example, xenophobia, racism, intolerance and discrimination. The lasted has as definition: "unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age or sex.", and it will also be the main point of this work.

Being different is knowing how to deal with difference

marianafilipajesus — 2019-11-22 09:34:12 UTC

People, as we all know, are different from each other. Our differences can be based on our emotions, personalities, our own stories/experiences and social models that influence our way to live.

Thereby, each one of us belongs to a group and either of them are our race. Which race has their own physical characteristics, that is, the term race refers to groups of people who have differences and similarities in biological traits deemed by society to be socially significant.
Between races, there are also a variety of civilizations where we can find diferences that are more universal, once it depends in the place you live: the ethnicity. The etnicity is composed for the group of people that have the same social features, as the language, religion and mores.

These are also elements that contributes for the construction of each type of culture.
Culture is a consist of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other common characteristics to the members of a particular group or society associated to the coexistence between people who live in the same environment for a long time. Through culture, people define themselves, conform to society's shared values. Culture can have origin in biological and social heritage once its roots are in the society.

Canada is one of the places where we can find a big diversity of people and cultures, once it attracts people from all over the world, and are so welcoming to immigrants, who usually mingle with native people.

Canadians are mostly Catholic and Protestant but they also practice the precepts of Buddhism and Hinduism.
When it comes to gastronomy Canada, as all other countries, has their typical foods: poutine and peamel bacon with diversified ingredients from England and France.

Canada also stands out for not only having one language but two: English and French.

It has several characteristics similar to our Portugal in terms of religion, gastronomy and people of different cultures

Discrimination between cultures

marianafilipajesus — 2019-11-22 09:50:04 UTC

There are a lot of countries with different cultures and because they're not the same, there can exist a lot of discrimination and some less friendly attitudes between cultures.

For example, less friendly attitudes can be ethnocentrism. It consists in the incompreension about the aspects of other cultures, which means that an ethnocentrist it's unable to accept other cultures beyond is own. In that way, they can assume a negative position like xenophobia, racism to perserve is own culture. According to UNESCO, the terms xenophobia and racism sometimes can be confused and take as the same thing, but in fact it differs in how the latter encompasses prejudice based on physical characteristics while the former is generally centered on behavior based on the notion of a specified people being adverse to the culture or nation.

The cultural relativism, it's another attitude less friendly because it happens when people don't let or don't want the other cultures to expand. This makes more difficult to other people live in other countries because they won't know that that particular country assumes such position, so they will be discriminated without undertanding why which will make them uncomfortable. We don't think that cultural relativism is correct because it is the opposite of the idea that moral truth is universal and objective, it contends that there isnt such thing as absolute right and wrong. There is only right and wrong as specified by the moral code of each society.
In our point of view, this most of the times feeds a feeling of superiority between people even when starting a conversations: cultural relativism feeds a separation between different ways to think and life exciting isolation of cultures and minority societies.
Russia is an example of a country that is very discriminated because people don't know very well their culture, they just think of them as a criminal country because of there past. Right now they're in conflit because of their differences and even about to start a war because of it.

We don't believe that people should be mean to the other just because their differences, specially because we can be the outsiders, that is, we can be with the skin of who receives all of that exlusion attitudes, For example if went suddently to live in United States we would receive some hate and some not very friendly attitudes because of the cultural difference once some people there believe that their culture is the only good one. There are some culture relativism towards Russia, because instead of people from other countries being discriminated by people from Russia, Russia and it's culture are discriminated from outsiders. Russia has so many good aspects of their culture to give but people don't put it in that way, they just assume that Russia is a bad country and has a bad culture since their history isnt the most amicable.

We should think a little bit outside of the box and accept others because having less friendly attitudes it's not something good for us and it can often prejudice someone and really harm others.

How does de Melting Pot Societies work?

marianafilipajesus — 2019-11-22 09:56:49 UTC

There are two types of societies that are beneficial to previous and current generations: The "Melting Pot" and "Salad Bowl" societies. Both of them can be really good to the relationship between people, however both also have some imperfections. Let's see.

The "Melting Pot" is society where different people or different cultures all come together and begin to merge and mix. The differet element will "melt" together with a common culture or the other way.

The exact term "melting pot" came to United States and so it is a example of this type of society because it has been used as a metaphor to describe the fusion of nacionalities, that is, America is the most used example of a "Melting Pot" because with time, generations of immigrants and people all over the world have melted together: they have abandoned their cultures to become totally assimilated into American society sharing thoughts and ideas to create one big new culture.

In the UK, they assume the "Salad Bowl" society by contrast with the USA. This model of racial integration can be described as people of different cultures living in harmony. Once US promotes the cultural diversity, being considered a positive thing, there immigrants are encouraged to maintain their traditions and their native language.

As we can conclude both models can be very beneficial to everyone. Nevertheless, while in a "Melting Pot there is no cultural diversity and sometimes differences are not respected and in the in a "Salad Bowl" cultures do not mix at all: with this we intend to show that even if both models can be good, when taken too seriously, it can be also prejudicial. And so, we consider that to managing cultural diversity we need to be conscious about our actions and be openend minds to everything and everyone.

Countries like USA, Brasil, Belgium, Portugal, Luxemburgo, Canada and Australia have joined to the "Melting Pot" culture where people with different cultures and ethnicities live in a good and healthy society. In Australia multiculturism it's very well accepted and there's a lot of diversity of cultures that people are already used to live with.

The "Melting Pot" can be a really good thing to our society because in that way we'll have more opportunities to know different cultures and met different people which is healthy. This can make other people think differently about other cultures and make them more apprehensible.

A different world cannot be built by indifferent people: Conclusion

marianafilipajesus — 2019-11-22 10:01:56 UTC

With this project we were able to make a in-depth analysis about how does the world work and how our societies have been built along with the time.

At first, we explained how people can be separated according to:

The race: their differences, being those pshysical or psychologial;
The etcnithicy: their language, religion and more;
The culture: their typical traditions, behaviors and beliefs.

We are all different, which is great because we are all unique. Without diversity life would be very boring. Nevertheless, once we're talking about difference and different cultures and types of people we couldnt not mention attitudes less friendly between cultures. In all societies, since the start of the formation of them, always have been a lots of inequalities. Here, we're approaching the social (biologically) and cultural ones. So, some groups of people in sociey fit in two types of individuals who have discriminatory attitudes towards other cultures:

Ethnocentrism: consists in the incompreension about the aspects of other cultures, that is, impossibility to accept other cultures beyond is own.
Cultural Relativism: when people don't let or don't want the other cultures to expand.

Beyond the difference of the position that people assume towards others cultures, there's also a difference between the type of society which each country deploys. And so, the relationship between different people is highly influenced by this:

The "Melting Pot" Society: where different people or different cultures all come together and begin to merge and mix creating one huge culture;
The "Salad Bowl" Society: where diferent culture people live in harmony respecting each others. However, they dont share or mix their culture, they only stand for what they believe and their own culture.

In this ways our intention with this work is to try promote multicuturlism and show how important it is to stand for bonds with people which are different from us. We always should respect peopl's culture. Because even if it doens't mean anything to you it could mean everything to them.

Being different is knowing how to deal with difference: part 2

marianafilipajesus — 2019-11-27 09:44:23 UTC

We can also be differentiated by our opinion, personality and character of our own.
We find that knowing how to deal with each other´s differences requires an emotional maturity and the ability to understand and be understood. Nowdays, the lack of ability to put themselves in other`s shoes to try understand others, is harming the relationship between people, friends and family but mostly making the communication and coexistence between different cultures harder. To reach a place where people can live with a diversity of races and cultures there´s the need to establish dialogue.

We think that "being different" its problably not easy because it requires courage to going through some especie of an acceptance process until "you" admit your own personality and phisycal aspect. We believe that the world is accepting more and more the people with different cultures and identities.

Finland is an example of a multicultural country and acceptance once it is opened arms to other cultures. It is a place where people are pretty much happy because it promotes social aids, as life expectations for everyone, liberty of thinking and expression, kindness and imigrant quality of life.