CULTURE.
Connecting the dots. Culture is shaped by Family, Religion, Economics (Poverty), Globalization, etc.
Adaptation is not the same as assimilation. Since two cultures can adapt alike or differently dependent on how each partakes in its surroundings.
The culture helps shape the individual and his/her behavior to a substantial degree, no doubt, but only the individual behavior, all put together, maintains a culture. So, cultures do change? Affecting the immediate environment of each person is the result of individual responses, not otherwise, for example, contrary to his culture, a Hispanic man can choose to divorce and run away from family.
Over thousands of years, the evolution of cities creates cultures different from one another. Where do their distinctions begin to take form? What factors are real contributors to culture or just passing trends leaving no mark? What personalities or groups make a dent, not on history, but on culture? Moses, Alexander, Gandhi, Caesar, Jefferson, Aristotle, the Rotarians? What elements shape a culture and what elements are results of a culture? Such as in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Zapoteca, Persia, and others? How about religions? Slavery? Volunteerism? Or does culture result from agriculture, mountains, oceans, climate, survival skills, language, proximities, and why do some cultures flourish, while others flounder? Cultures in the Amazon River regions or in mixed Mozambique. Or why did some first flourished and later floundered, like ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures. We have seen innovative technology, such as gun power, create and dissolve entire empires, and with it, cultures. Intriguing! Not one issue alone provides a simplistic answer to the truth.
What elements led to the unification of so many cultures, allowing a country so diversified to maintain unity and become a growing world power? One detail, the French men up north in Canada, and the Spanish men down south in what is now Latin America, came mostly without wife or children. Not so the English, they left Europe with their families, to settle in another continent. The power of the family. This difference had long-lasting effects. Family and religion. P.69
A good example of this rush to judgement is the cultural difference found between the concepts of volunteerism among strangers in the Anglo culture, versus support of the extended family among relatives, in the Hispanic culture, which substitutes volunteerism. Each one criticizes the other for not doing things their way. P. 129
One detail imperative in education is that parents should read with and to their children, and for Barrio children, they should read with them in both languages, but this did not happen enough. P. 148
How do cultures measure the sensation of space, movement, time, cause and effect, fate and free will? Family and space is critically different in many non-Anglo cultures, and Anglos fail to comprehend that. This understanding can lead to better coexistence. P. 150. (Architecture. Family.)
In the world map, the forces of globalization, – to cause displacement of previous norms, – follows the same patterns as the displacement of India tribes from their lands. Simultaneously, diversity without competition creates a declining mediocrity. At home, in the schools, and in the world market P. 387