Earth Day and Cultural Anthropology Studies

Today is Earth day and I think it is only natural to think about the earth in it's entirety. This would include the geology and also studies in cultural anthropology. I happen to be blessed with a collection of anthropology books, that I got for free. I like to call it a miracle, or a syncrhronistic manifestation. The books are from a used book store that is like a spiritual vortex, helping people manifest the knowledge that they are seeking.

Last night I was reading a page from a book called Cultural Anthropology, Understanding Ourselves and Others, second edition, by Richley H. Crapo. I immediately started reading about culture shock, but I flipped through the pages and found myself very interested in a section titled "Intercultural Influences". I would like share an excerpt from that book, that I believe is important for everyone to understand.

Intercultural Influences

Contact between cultures can bring tremendous change. This is especially true when the two societies differ greatly in economic and political power. Sometimes the extinction of native populations has been carried out by systematic acts of war. Even in less extreme cases, the transition from the traditional way of life to a socially dependent status is never without turmoil. Cultural subordination of one way of life by another, even when it occurs peaceably, can be a shattering experience both psychologically and culturally.

Time and time again, anthropologists have described the tragic effects of the world's nonagricultural peoples of contact with the industrialized peoples of the world. Diseases introduced from the more densely populated societies sometimes decimate the local population, in which there is less resistance to the diseases of the civilized world. The awareness that other peoples are more powerful and more blessed with luxuries is a blow to the cultural pride that unifies a society. Often, contact is followed by a rise in the rate of internal conflict and other forms of deviance, such as alcoholism and suicide. For the Kwakiutl (tribe), contact with Europeans may have led to exaggerated-and destructive-attempts to display wealth and power.   

This really makes me think about the conflicts that are going on around the world, and right here in the United States, between the people of different states or within the groups of people with different economical statuses and religious or spiritual views.

In the United States accurate education about world history is stifled. It takes a certain amount of intuitiveness and curiosity to break free from this perception. Ideally, we would all want to strive for a better understanding of the world, but most of the time, this is not the case.

I believe that it is our responsibility to try to understand the psychology of the people in the world and our own psychological process. With insight into these processes we can better understand and accept different cultures and religions with less resistance.