Being Weird: How Culture Shapes The Mind

In the passage by Ethan Watters, Being Weird: How Culture Shapes the Mind, the anthropologist, Joe Henrich conducts a study during a trip to Peru. Henrich proposes to Watters to not use his advice as “self-help advice” (498). I personally agree with this claim. Much like those in the ultimatum game in Peru, I have the same mindset. This however is affected because I come from a different culture. I come from Colombia, a culture that much like in the text, is explained to add spice to the Western culture (494). I view the world in many ways, because in my culture and generation I have been taught that not everyone is the same, in a psychological sense and yet we are the same, in the root of the sense, that we are all just a bag of bones that simply are different in a physical way. This experiment should simply be seen as
It is not a personal thing to be taken to heart but rather just knowing that as a whole, we are more inclined to acting a certain way due to our upbringings. My culture impacts my thinking because I am part of the newer generation of liberal arts students. In the passage Watters explains, “It’s generally agreed that all of us see the world in ways that are sometimes socially and culturally constructed, that pluralism is good and that ethnocentrism is bad… Challenge liberal arts graduates on their appreciation of cultural diversity and you’ll often find them retreating to the anodyne nothion that under the skin everyone is really alike” (494). My generation has cultured my Western mind to assimilate this as a norm. Although Westerners sometimes think that everything is narrow and in a sense, all the same. However the way I have been predisposed to seeing that people are different and all walks of life are different cause me to understand that not all Westerners are the same and that this study by Henrich is not a personal attack to how culture affects