Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!hou5f!hou5a!hou5d!hogpc!houxm!houxu!welsch From: welsch@houxu.UUCP Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Culture and AAP Message-ID: <132@houxu.UUCP> Date: Thu, 23-Jun-83 13:54:43 EDT Article-I.D.: houxu.132 Posted: Thu Jun 23 13:54:43 1983 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jun-83 01:15:54 EDT Lines: 43 Laura, Your statement: 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 -- ... is close to the way feel, but not quite. My main gripe against culture is when culture limits a person's choices either by not letting the person know she has a choice or by prejudicing the members of a culture such that it is impossible for a person to make a particular choice. I know of no means other than statistics to identify when a culture that is limiting the choice. Simply skewing a distribution is not strong enough for me to believe that culture is at fault. The skew should be profound as in greater than two standard deviations. Two standard deviations cover roughly 95% of all events, so an event not within two standard deviations of the norm has a 5% chance of occurring. And yes, I believe the norm is when the races/religions/sexes ... are represented roughly in proportion. Though, there, will always be exceptions, like the number of male pregnancies, or Christian Science doctors, .... Yes it is part of my culture, upbringing, mindset, ... to consider individuals to be more important than cultures. I believe that to the extent that a particular culture aides individuals to grow the culture is good. When a culture prevents individuals from growing then it should be changed and improved. The culture should grow. Culture is not a static well defined object, but rather a growing, evolving set of ethics, values, habits, rules, etc. I am advocating improvement for the culture(s) that I am a member of, and I will work actively for that improvement. Larry Welsch houxu!welsch