Why our culture is declining, and why we are following western culture blindly, is it good to follow or not?


Firstly we will look into definition culture:

According to the classic definition of culture given by E.B Taylor

"Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by the man as a member of the society”

The definition states that culture Is that complex whole i-e a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts…which includes all the knowledge we have in the form of books and literature, beliefs of a person, art and aesthetics including folk tales, handicrafts, all the moral codes norms, values, traditions, ethics and all the abilities of an indigenous individual acquired by him/her as a member of society…. so its clear that every person living in a given society conscious or unconsciously follows some codes of conduct and has a specific way of behavior which is called as culture…

Another definition states that

“Culture is the man-made part of environment”

So we have two types of environment.

1- Natural environment
2- Man made
Natural is the one which is given to us by god…. it includes all naturally occurring resources like water, minerals, fruits vegetables, sunlight, rainfall natural disasters etc.

Now when we talk about man made environment it refers to all those ways, tactics and procedures adopted by man to utilize these resources… e.g

If we take the example of Eskimos….these people have to face hardships, but the way they manage to live is entirely different from those residing in other parts of the world….this is culture, that how they adopt to their environment. The way they cope with the situations…


If we take another small example of Fruits…fruits are a natural blessing of god…its part of nature…. every society and its people are blessed with different sorts of fruits… now the way people make use of these fruits is different…. for example there can be difference in ways of eating, there can be difference in the way they cut it. Like if we take example of typical Punjabi culture…its totally different from the west…. Mango the most popular and most liked fruit is eaten very openly in our culture…many mangoes are placed in a large utensil usually a bucket with lots of ice or cold water…and than without caring about clothes, face and hands it is eaten very frankly…opposite to the west where it is cut with 100’s of styles and placed stylishly served in platter…and after so many steps finally eaten…this is all part of culture….
I will give another example of dress patterns…. The universal phenomena is that all human beings need some thing to protect their bodies. Its natural… but the way people dress is different in all societies…this is culture and cultural differences.

Reasons for decline in culture
Due to shortage of time I will very briefly discuss some reasons which i consider to be responsible for moribund of our culture…


1-) Mass media…
The main factor, which I personally think, is responsible for culture deterioration is Mass Media…. It includes both electronic and print media…. but I think electronic media is more responsible…now a days all the TV channels are promoting cultures of other nations especially Hindu culture…people are so much habitual of it that they are day by day forgetting their own golden culture and cultural values…people are following the dress patterns of the west, food habits are being adopted, lack of respect among the youth for elders, modernism and many other.

2-) Acculturation…
Acculturation is an other cause of cultural decline…. we are borrowing traits of other’s culture so hastily that we are gradually forgetting our original culture…the adaptation rate is very high…merging up of two cultures results in loss of one.


3-) Globalization…Loss in culture is also the outcome of rapid globalization…. its due to the swift transfer of knowledge, technology, manpower, ideas from one country to another country, due to which our culture is fading out.

4-)Lack of ethnocentrism…
I think due shortage of ethnocentric values among the native there is decline in our culture. People are no more ethnocentric…they don’t have much respect for their own culture.

5-) lack of child socialization...
Its due to parents neglect ion that the youth is going towards western culture…parents have given so much freedom to their children that they don’t even know where their children are going…what type of dress they are wearing…what sort of food they are taking…what are there ideas regarding religion and culture? and they don’t even have time to tell their children about their culture…

6-)Lack of transmission of culture from generation to generation…Due to lack of transmission of cultural values by ancestors there is continuous loss in culture and cultural values…. this will also result in further loss when this generation will have nothing to transmit to their own generation except from the artificial culture which they have adopted of the west…but here we cannot give whole blame to the elders because some times it’s the youth who doesn’t want to receive and adopt their own culture willingly…

7-)Notion of Brain drain…I think the notion of brain drain has also some role for decline of our culture and cultural values…. e.g. when the. the cream of the country is taken away by the west…. When these people return back they become a source of inspiration for others…. these young people have some times fully or partially adopted the international cultures…so they become role models for others…resulting in cultural loss…


8-)No conditioning of people…
Due to lack of social conditioning and proper training of natives…we have to face culture deterioration…people are not aware of the importance of their own cultures…there is no training to create awareness among the masses how to safeguard their own culture…

9-)Propaganda by west…
Unhealthy propaganda by the west is also a cause for cultural decline…these people project their own culture in such a way that I seems that there culture is the only best culture of the world…we can see that even they had not left a single chance to hit our food habits too…. opening of international chains of KFC, McDonalds, or pizza hut…is an example…what they are doing is that they are now finishing this junk food in the own countries due to increasing rate of obesity among their youth, and they are throwing away the junk to country like ours…

10-)Elites as role models…There is a trend in our society that people follow the elite class blinding without looking at the consequences…. like if the high gentry is preferring going to KFC, McDonalds, or pizza hut…the lower class will also feel proud and elevated to visit such places even if they couldn’t afford to go there…

11-)Third world….
Another problem of our country is that we are so called third world country and are so much impressed from these developed nations that we always think what they are doing is 100% correct….and we will surely succeed if we follow..

12-)Migration…
Migration to other countries is another cause of cultural turn down…in our country people prefer infact feel superior to work in foreign states…when lot of people move abroad, settle establish there automatically the adopt many of their cultural traits…. apart from adoption they also transfer many of these traits to their native cultures…. resulting in decline of their own culture…

IS IT GOOD TO FOLLOW:
NOW in my opinion its not good to follow the western culture blindly, but yes we can adopt good things, but only to such an extent that we retain our own culture and stop abondoning our own…

what do u people say....waiting for ur precious comments

regards,

First of all, I feel that "decline" is not the right word to use here. We should call it "adoptation" or simply "transition". No doubt we are accepting a lot of norms and values, some of which might be called "good" while others are bad. But even to say that some are good while others are not is to be very unscientific. Good and bad are simply relative. All we need is to analyze why certain "changes", I repeat "changes" are taking place in our culture.

For us people, living in the subcontinent, it's not a new phenomenon that some other culture is affecting us. There are a lot of examples even from our recent history, like the Arab culture and Central Asian Culture affecting us. Subcontinent in its turn has also affected a lot of cultures like its effect on the cultures of those who came here and later integrated in this society. And even today we are not living in isolation from the rest of the world. It's only natural then to accept the influences of the rest of the world.

What is disconcerting in this situation, though, is that we are more being affected than we are affecting others. But this again is quite natural. Economic superiority of the west and their hold on mass media is the key factor behind this "change" in our cultural norms.

You simply can't force people, nor even convice them by rational argumentation that they should hold such and such values, or observe such and such rules of conduct. This is largely an unconscious process. For anybody to promote only the "desired" norms in the society the first prerequisite is to have the means to change or mould the minds of these people. The problem at present is that we simply do not hold such means.

woah !.. what a speech

could view the important points only
have to cram for my exams !

@nimr

as u wish dear....no precincts ..u can view after exams.
regards,

__________________
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A Man Would Do Nothing,
If He Waited Until He
Could Do It So Well
That No One Would Find Fault
With What He Has Done.

@Prieti
Sister really Nice topic selection for discussion ,
Quite impressive description of ideas too:-)

Well culture adoption is not bad as far as their ripple effects are verified to be normalized and less propblematic.Well culture of observation/exploration of things around us is actually our Islamic asset but we found it in western and first world socities.To gain knowledge is our prime responsibility(FARZ) but even a single glimpse of Islamic world reflect the true figures of our worst educational structure.Well as far as social values of every society are concerned they are also a flavor of bad and good things.The right direction is to opt for the good ones only whose results are proven and reflect from the respective societies.The point u mentioned as Globalization is (I think) the top most reason for such rapid adoption or sharing of culture and traditions among socities.

__________________
No One is Perfect!
So IM No One

A culture never declines It gets replaced. The reason is that every one is preoccupied with their work and have less time for a familly gathering. The less we interact the less knowledge we recieve from our elders. One cannot blame media of beeing the cause. Media is a source of knowledge. We should try to extract all taht is usefull and discard all that leads to misery.

@nimr

dear u r correct wid ur arguments.....Cul is gradually Surrogating....as i had mentioned earlier that one of the reasons for its replacement is lack of child sociolization and transfer from generation to generation.....but i thnik u will accede to my point that we cannot ignore the role of media at any cost....media now a days is one of the fastest ways of comminication....and it really has significant impact on culture understuding.....yah we can not wholly solely blame media but on the other hand can't even disregard or ignore this factor completely....its upon us the users that how do we espouse with its positivities and negativities.....cul is not a diminutive thing which can be replaced by one or two factors influencing it...rather it requires many years and many influencing factors for its replacement...

regards,

__________________
_____________________________________________

A Man Would Do Nothing,
If He Waited Until He
Could Do It So Well
That No One Would Find Fault
With What He Has Done.

I won't agree with your point dragging media as your stand. i would be comming up with my argument shorlty , M on UPS with a minute backup

@najabat

bro.i am glad to read ur comments.....thanks for appreciation...
well what i undrstood from ur reply is that it depends upon every individual indegenous to play his/her part in taking up the good values.... The right direction to opt for the good ones and run off the bad ones...is the responsibility of community...and yes Globalization has played its role in every aspect...

regards,

__________________
_____________________________________________

A Man Would Do Nothing,
If He Waited Until He
Could Do It So Well
That No One Would Find Fault
With What He Has Done.

Well Its really nice to see that there are many people who r discussing WHY's?
All have discussed the major factors which are responsible for the declining of our culture. I used the word declining deliberately because we are losing our values which are 4me atleast most important. But 4me the root cause of declining the culture is lack of appropriate education. Education 4me is the solution of each and every problem. But first lets see what I mean by appropriate education.
Education 4me doesn't mean that you learn a thing. 4me its how u understand a thing. Our education system is such that we just accept every thing which is imposed on us. Why this is so. This is because we don't study religion, philosophy, logic, ethics and other subjects in our early life. We study Islamiat which is just a basic guideline of fundamentals and which is just memorized upto Metric without understanding its philosophy. This is why most of us even don't know what religion is, why religion is, what is god, why is god, etc.
As far as Philosophy, logic and ethics are concerned, I don't mean that add Aristotles or Sacrotes concepts in Primary, I just want to say instead of teaching Science, isn't it better to evoke thinking and problem solving attitude since the very beginning. Ethics is important for character building, philosophy and logic are important for thinking. We never study philosophy in our whole life but Philosophy is every thing,
If philosophy is scientifically proven it is science,
if it is converted into an art-form it is converted to art.
If it is factual, it is logic; if it can't be explained it is logic.
But such a shame that we never study law, philosophy, ethics, etc in whole of our life. I think these subjects should be there 4m the very beginning. These had been the main cause of success for the gr8 muslim scientists like respected khwarzami, Haitham, sina, etc. But lack of these in our education system leads to our lacking in saying "WHY". And when we don't say why we don't analyze things and when we don't analyze things we just accept them blindly.
And onething more education is not just to become learned, it has alot of purposes. The main aim of education 4me is to realize what life is, why we are here, why there are always 2 paths one right and one wrong, why the wrong path always attract us, and alot of questions like these. In short, the aim of education should be to create humanity in humans but it is a shame that humanities are taught to us.
If we are able to study humanities, we would become good humans, we would be able to analyze things better. And all these factors like the media, globalization ,etc will then find it really hard to change the culture such rapidly. Not only this decline in culture but each and every problem is solved if we get quality education.
This cultural decline spreaded by the media is because the Free-doom of media has allowed it to show anything without any stoppage and what they are doing is that they have become money makin machines. They spread propaganda, give prejudiced opinions becoz of their vested interests, they don't care about culture and values, they just want to earn money, get famous and be #1. IF we would have got quality education, we should not be thinking of money and status as the primary things in life, we should be thinking of human nature, its positives. And why the education system hasn't become up to that mark. It is because we haven't got any sincere leaders after Quaid-e-azam. We just got managers, again due to lack of qulaity education.
Well I will be recently posting a new thread abut the education, its purpose, education system and ideal education system 4me. And plz give ur comments All comments are gr8ly welcomed. And thnx for ur patient reading.

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Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?