By: N. George
Worth Noting:
- Various communities have both similar and different norms but that does not mean that either of the community is wrong. It all depends on their history, what made them to perceive some acts as a wrong while allowing others to continue being practiced.
- Modern games are some of the avenues that are used to promote integration among communities by giving opportunity for all teams from across the globe to fairly compete against each other making each one of them realise there are shared factors among them. Any team defeated tries to win during the next meeting while the teams that draw appreciate that their opponents are equally stronger like them and aims at working hard so that they may emerge the winner in the next meeting.
Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures that are from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts, but brothers, not rivals, but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence. The difference is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging..……… Demosthenes
Around the world all people are cautious who they are dealing with whether one is a family member or a member of the neighbouring community, neighbouring country, continent or far away continent.
Each society has its norms; all the members are expected to follow them failure to which there are well known consequences which may include being sent into isolation like jail, people avoiding to associate with you and being referred as a bad example in the community among many other negative consequences.
At a nuclear family level the parents are the role models to the kids how they behave affects what their kids perceive as the expected code of behaviour. Suppose a dad knocks the door before entering in to the house the kid will emulate him and be doing the same anyone failing to do so will be seen by the kid as an impolite person.
If the dad brushes his teeth twice on daily basis the kid will see this as the expected standard failure to do so will be taken as being unhygienic.
If the parents are in abusive marriage where they fight constantly the children will take is as a norm to fight and you may even see them fight whenever discontented with a certain issue same. When it comes to verbal abuse the words the parents constantly use are prone to be repeated by the kids.
As a kid when your neighbours behave in a different way than your parents do you see them as awkward simply because your gauge of what is morally acceptable is how your parents and siblings doing.
Traditionally more so in African societies there used to be communal dances and work like thatching of houses and tilling the land was also done communally. This offered great chances for members of the society to integrate learn about each other and appreciate each other. Children were taught by their grandparents if boys by their grandfathers while girls by their grandmothers so kids belonging to various children of one grandmother would generally be taught at the same time improving their chemistry as they feel the sense of belonging due to their shared ancestry.
Various communities have both similar and different norms but that does not mean that either of the community is wrong. It all depends on their history, what made them to perceive some acts as a wrong while allowing others to continue being practiced.
Modern games are some of the avenues that are used to promote integration among communities by giving opportunity for all teams from across the globe to fairly compete against each other making each one of them realise there are shared factors among them. Any team defeated tries to win during the next meeting while the teams that draw appreciate that their opponents are equally stronger like them and aims at working hard so that they may emerge the winner in the next meeting.
Like the trees which are of multiple types so are people and their cultures which include religion. All that we should do with these diversities is to see how best we can use them to favour us by analyzing all the benefits we derive from them and emphasizing on those benefits. Since cultures keep evolving trying to improve them should be our primary duty to enhance the quality of our lives.
When covid-19 broke out in late 2019 and spread fast across the globe in 2020 killing millions of people governments and scientists joined hands and shared information about the behaviour of the virus, used several approaches in coming up with vaccines which helped to bring down the number of deaths across the world.
In a similar version we need not to focus much on the differences of languages or behaviours of other people compared to ours rather we should ask ourselves how we can benefit from what they do as well as them benefit from what we do after all we are not equal even among ourselves as some are short others tall, some are thin others fat, some are deep voiced others are soft spoken, some outgoing others are reserved.
Let us value each other as you see your neighbour being different from you he also sees you being different from him but both of you are important in each other’s life.
Mary Karau Ngethe