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Showing posts from March, 2016

The Dynamic Nature of Culture

Not so long ago, just about a hundred or so years ago, walking around bare-chested even for women in interior Africa was considered normal. It would be much frowned upon today. The culture of female genital mutilation was pretty much very okay, even among people who would consider themselves very morally upright if they lived today. Now, such a practice would be considered barbaric, perhaps even among some of the worst evils in a society. In medieval Europe during the dark ages, suspected witches and wizards were hunted down like wild animals and lynched, probably hanged after a show trial if the authorities wanted to make it seem like the rule of law had been observed. Today in Europe, sorcerers are as considered mythical just as mythical as Loch Ness or vampires. Those few cases perhaps illustrate the dynamic nature of culture, and the fact that change is inevitable in the long term no matter how hard it’s resisted, or how right or “true”   the things in question might ha