[Paleopsych] status

[G. Reinhart-Waller]

Most people in our parents or grandparents generations don't have 
positive experiences with other cultures, especially those which foster 
different religions, employment status, food preparations and treats, 
economic status, or even household arrangements unless they were tuned 
into acceptance of those cultural characteristics most resembling their 
own.  Many ethnic groups were viewed with disapproval, especially if 
they were deemed inferior due to their lower status.  In a small 
community like the one in which I was raised, status in terms of 
everything that might be used as a point of comparison was identified 
and boldly placed on the table for self evaluation.  I stacked up well 
in comparison to my neighbors because my family chose to remain in the 
"old neighborhood" refusing a move to suburbia where most of my father's 
co-workers lived.  My father's job when measured by those my neighbor's 
dads held was top notch and didn't much pale when I  stacked him up 
against those jobs held by my college friends' fathers.  But then, my 
college was a state university and not a private one.  Likely my world 
would have been viewed through different lenses if my university life 
had been of a different kind.

Regards,
Gerry Reinhart-Waller

Michael Christopher wrote:

>--Probably depends on a person's early experiences
>with other cultures. If those experiences are
>positive, multiculturalism appears nonthreatening. If
>those experiences are embarrassing or painful, it can
>be hard to undo that early experience as an adult, and
>some adults find it easier to crusade against the
>mixing of cultures as a way of avoiding having to
>adapt. But mixing is inevitable. It would have been
>impossible for some authority to say "Blues and
>country music shall never blend!" But it wouldn't have
>held back country-blues. Genes recombine, and so do
>cultures. It's how nature works.
>  
>