You Are What You Eat

Since everyone must eat, what we eat develops an utmost influential symbol of who we are. To establish oneself apart from others by what we will and will not consume is a social hurdle virtually as powerful as the incest taboo, which articulates to us with whom we may or may not have relations. Some nations associate the both taboos. The equivalent of this is that one classifies their self with others by consuming the same things in a similar way. To accomplish such credentials, people will struggle to consume things they oppose, and shun an impeccably appetizing diet that is on the forbidden list. In the progression of social climbing people have to acquire a taste for caviar, artichokes, snails, and asparagus, and disdain from dumplings, fish and chips, and meat and potato pie all healthier, but hopelessly soiled with lower-class connotations.

If one studies culture extensively, you will unearth something that astonishes you. How you cope with that experience of astonishment will fall somewhere along a spectrum with ethnocentricity on one end and cultural relativism on the other. A spectrum defines the relationship between two extremes that progressively fluctuates as you travel from one end to the other. A somber light switch is a good metaphor of this spectrum. At the lowest function the beams are all the way off, but glide the switch upward the beam progressively intensifies until the highest and most concentrated illumination is reached.

Toward one side of the spectrum is ethnocentricity. To be ethnocentric is to critic another society utilizing one's own particular societies ethics and standards. An ethnocentric individual says, "there is one right approach to live and it's the way the general population of my way of life live." (Palmer, 2015) On the inverse end of the spectrum is social relativity. To be a social relativist is to analyze another society with that culture's morals and not your own. A social relativist says, "there are numerous approaches to live and my way of life is only one of them. "The circumstance may appear to be hard, to be a social relativist when another society is carrying out something that you feel is immoral. (Palmer, 2015) In any case, recollect that all societies do things that a novice may see as exploitative. Basically implying that in the event that you could see your own particular society from the eyes of individuals from different societies, you would likely find that your own particular society does things that are difficult to defend.

For example, individuals in the U.S. as well as, the government rush to reprimand nations like China for not permitting their natives to be free and speak their mind. However, the U.S. detains a greater amount of its residents than any other nation on the planet. The fact of the matter is; ethnocentric individuals just need toss a couple stones before they find that they live in a glass house.

In my honest opinion eating toasted ants, fried frog legs, puppies and kittens, and eating raw monkey brains is a matter of preference. I know cultures have eaten some of these things to survive and when survival comes into play many things are done out of fear of the unknown i.e. Death. A lot of these delicacies have stuck with cultures and now have become part of who they are as a culture and that is not for me to judge making me a cultural relative.