Culture, Norms, and Customs

       It was not requirement to post this page, but I love to write about culture because it is my job and, also, I see it is very important to talk about culture to change things toward better. In the United States, people don’t go outside country often, because they can get what they want here in America. People learn other countries’ culture from Hollywood or from friend. This kind of information generates assumption and stereotype which give us wrong ideas about other people.

      There are many definitions for culture, norms, and customs, but all these definitions are view of certain people. These definitions might be right or wrong, it is just opinion. I have my own opinion about all this. I believe there are two different things; culture and norms. Culture is anything that imposed on society by faith or historical significant, and norm is any human behavior that accumulated and become part of their daily life. Culture cannot change but norm can be change, but it will take a lot of effort and time to change some norms. The line between these two is blurred, things are overlapped and it’s hard to be separated.

     For instance, people in the U.S. celebrate Thanksgiving at November while people in the neighbor Canada celebrate Thanksgiving in October. My question is “can we go and tell people in Canada celebrate your Thanksgiving at November? The answer will be “NO”, but can we change whatever is served on their table, the answer is “Yes.” The time of the celebration is historical significant related, but the food that served on the table is human generated behavior and can be changed.

        I would like to talk about Yemen, the poorest Arab country in Arab peninsular. People in this country are drug addicted, 75% to 85% of the society consume drug on daily bases, and this is include men, women, children, and government officials. The country’s water supply will deplete by 2017 according to all expectation because all water goes to cultivate drugs “Qat”. The person spends 60% of his income to buy drug, live stops completely after 12:00 P.M. Many people call this culture; I don’t call this culture I called tradition or norm which means can be changed. To erase something that accumulated for all this years, will be very difficult and hard task, and it will not happen overnight.