Cultural Comfort

I am from a very small town that neighbors a reservation community of Mi’kmaq First Nations. Although I may not have grown up in a large multicultural setting like the big city of Toronto, living next to the First Nations community I often found myself interacting with its members and developed some understanding of their traditions. From a young age I was exposed to a different culture and able to first hand witness its influences, unlike some other children in other rural settings. The elementary school I went to would sometimes hold mini powwows where there was dancing, singing, drumming and socializing among the elders and the chiefs of the community. That was my first experience with a different cultures ritual and because of this I was able to appreciate the differences held among cultures at a young age. I believe it did give me some level of comfort, but I personally believe it was because I was exposed to it early on. As mentioned in a previous blog when my friends traveled to Peru they did not expect some of the things they did. That’s just the thing, we already have certain expectations that we learned from our own culture (For example, my expectation was that the guinea pig was meant for a pet, while the Peruvians viewed it as food). Described there is ethnocentrism; the belief that your own culture’s norms, values, practices, etc, are the correct ways, while other culture’s way are unnatural. Every person has their own experiences and it is those experiences that will shape and create the variability in psychological processing. Another thing that I believe that has given me some level of comfort with other cultures is education. Being educated on the fact that there are other cultures out there and that there is not one right culture and we all have our own values, beliefs and ideal has diminished my ethnocentrism.  But don’t get me wrong, if I was to travel to a new country right now that I have had no exposure to and that practiced very different traditions then I do, I would still feel the ‘culture shock’. My psychological processes are just different from other individuals so it would feel somewhat odd or unfamiliar to me. I believe, for me personally, that the more you are exposed to other cultures and the more education you have about cultural differences will impact my experience.