Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsstat.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Reply to Laura (more on AAP)
Message-ID: <706@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Jun-83 17:25:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.706
Posted: Tue Jun 21 17:25:57 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Jun-83 19:47:18 EDT
References: <118@houxu.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 61

Larry, to get to me you can use ihnp4!utzoo!utcsstat!laura.

Larry, you belong to a culture, I belong to a culture, everyone
belongs to a culture. Sometimes you cannot see what the culture
is until you move to another country and try to live there. If
your culture is the same as that of the majority of your neighbours
then you may *have* to move away to see it. 

You cannot take away all cultures even if that were desirable. 
There is no way that you can get away from it. Your family, your town,
your country -- all of these provide cultural references that you
will pick up as you grow up. There is no way that you can get away
from it.

Culture is not a bad thing; it is an essential thing which is part
of every human. Some people cleave to their cultures more than others
and are more "patriotic" so to speak than others. Do you not know any
Jewish people who are very proud that they are Jews? or French
Canadians who are proud of their identity as French Canadians? Or
Chinese immigrants who have some pride in their heritage? or Blacks
who are proud of their Blackness? I know all of these. Have you ever
travelled to a place where the government was doing atrocious things
to its people and thought -- gee Im proud that I am an American? I
worked in Honduras for a time with a whole lot of Californians, and
seeing some of the horrible things that went on in Honduras, everyone
went back saying how pleased they were that they were Americans (or
in my case Canadian). 

Part of being in a culture is to some extent adopting the likes and
dislikes of that culture. You need not adopt all of them, but most
people will adopt some. There are extreme cases (almost every Orthodox
Jew you meet will observe dietary practices that "joe average North
America" does not) and more moderate ones (there are not very many 
"middle Americans" that hate hamburgers, but I dont like them very
much at all). Is this wrong? Do you want to change this?

I gather that your main gripe against culture is that it skews the
distributions of people within a given career. Why is this so wrong?
I am not talking about a caste system as they had (and to some extent
still do have) in India and Pakistan where large groups of people were
prevented from doing various jobs because of the nature of the class of
their birth -- I am talking about going downstairs and down the street
and looking at the 2 student vaxen. One of these vaxen is (more or less)
used for Electrical Engineering and the other is used for Computer Science.
If you take a head count you will find that 70% (more or less) are Orientals.
What are you supposed to say to these people? That there are not enough
Chinese policemen proportionately and therefore some of them are going to
have to stop being engineers and start being policemen? I am sure that
a lot of them could make good policemen, but the fact of the matter is
that of their own free will they decided to become engineering or
computer science students -- Are you going to penalise them because many
others in their culture decided the same thing?  Isnt this discrimination?
Or are you going to say that they didnt make a decision, but their culture
dictated it for them? If this is your position, then tell me -- how are
you sure that any decisions you make are not the dictates of your own
culture, and how do you feel about the decisions that you make that you
are sure are right and also happen to be the typical response for people
of your culture?

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura