Class Session III>How Did Things Get to be This Way?

Quiz

This week, we ask the question, “How Did Things Get to Be the Way They Are?” To answer this question, we first have to learn how to look at the world more “objectively”. The word “objectively” means to assess a situation or event in a way which is not influenced by beliefs, values, emotions, or cultural norms. This is a REALLY hard thing to do. As humans, we are laden with our own belief and value systems, which we have absorbed from our life’s interaction with our families, friends, and the culture in which we live. The value in looking at things objectively, however, is that you can get a better understanding of what is really going on. To look at things objectively, it often means that one must strip away what one believes and change the way you think.

In last week’s notes we said that environmental science is concerned about the interactions of the sociosphere with the earth’s other four spheres. The sociosphere itself, however, is not a homogenous group. It is composed of over 6 billion humans broken apart into 3,500 cultural groups or tribes, living in 195 countries and speaking over 5,000 languages. In order to assess human cultures, it is important to try and be as objective as possible. Another way to say this is to try and look at cultures without viewing their behavior in an ethnocentric way. To be ethnocentric means to view and judge other cultures and societies according to the assumptions of one’s own society. A non-ethnocentric approach, for example, would seek to identify differences between groups of people without judging one group as any better or worse than another, only different.

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