PERSPECTIV
ES
AND
RATIONALITI
ES
TERMINOLOGIES:
Culture – ‘Culture’ is information stored in people’s
minds, which can be transmitted among
individuals. (Henrich, John et,al.,
2015)
Perspective – is defined by Merriam-Webster
Dictionary in which a subject or its
parts are mentally viewed.
Rationality – the existence of reasons or intensions
for a particular set of thoughts or
actions; reason. (Cambridge
University Press, 2020)
CULTURE AS PROTOTYPE OF
RATIONALITY
Whether human society and culture are to be regarded
as an objective expression of the nature of the
individual, or whether the individual is rather to be
conceived as the outcome or resultant of the mode of
communal life, the intimacy of the relationship which
exists between culture and the mind of the human
individual is undeniable.
We may well, then, undertake an examination of the
form of human’s activity as a social being in the hope of
finding there the analogue or prototype of the form of
our ideal activity as a conceptual thinker.
Nor is such an enterprise to be condemned as a piece of
abstract intellectualism based on uncritical acceptance
of human as primarily a rational being.
CULTURE AS PROTOTYPE OF
RATIONALITY
It is often contended today on the basis of
psychological evidence that reason plays a very
small part in human life.
What motivates the actions of the individual and
determines his/her basic beliefs are his/her vital
needs, his/her instinctual drives and unconscious
desires.
It is these same psychological forces, it is urged,
that shape, or are expressed by, the cultural
patterns of his/her social life.
CULTURE AS PROTOTYPE OF
RATIONALITY
Human’s fundamental rationality is not properly
to be limited to the capacity for drawing logically
valid conclusions from formulated premises -
although he/she undoubtedly has such capacity.
We may grant that he/she is often unreasonable
in his/her conduct and in his/her beliefs, that
he/she will rarely consent to “follow the
argument whithersoever it leads,” that the wish
is frequently father to the thought-in short, that
there is no such thing as “reason” which can
control impulse or act in independence of human
need and feeling.
INSTINCT AND CULTURE
Human beings , unlike animals, are not heavily
dependent on instinct.
Instinctual aspects are present in specific
actions such as breathing, making sounds when
surprised or shocked, upright walking, or
choosing between fight or flight.
INSTINCT AND CULTURE
More than these instinct-driven actions, human are
distinct from other beings because they process
systems of meanings that tell what is right or wrong
and good or evil.
For instance, procreation is an instinct as there is a
drive in people toward procreation.
These choices are shaped not by instinct but by frame
of understanding that determines a person’s giving
INSTINCT AND CULTURE
This frame of understanding is what Clifford Geertz
calls culture.
Culture is the system of symbols that allows people
to give meaning to experience.
It bears all the accumulated knowledge of people
coded into symbols that will help them interpret
what is happening to or around them, and how they
can give an appropriate response to the experience.
This system is necessary because when an event or
phenomenon takes place, people need to respond to
it in a way that is rational to them.
INSTINCT AND CULTURE
Every person has internalized shortcuts for
giving meaning and meaningful responses coded
into the system, especially inherited culture.
Culture provides people with systems of
shortcuts for meaningful interpretation and
responses.
This is what culture does: it takes the place of
instinct to give people a quick representation
and response based on collective experience to
the things that confront them.
CULTURE AND INDIVIDUAL
FREEDOM
It is only as individuals appropriate and make
distinctive use of what they share as their cultural
heritage that their innate differences can be
realized.
Every human being may be born as a “free”
individual, but he/she cannot exercise his freedom
either in a structureless medium.
Like Kant’s “light dove,” it can fly only in an
atmosphere which at once supports and resists it
and it can freely sustain and direct its flight only if
it’s, like the bird, has developed an internal
dynamic structure by which it can coordinate its
movements with the differential variations of
pressure encountered within the medium.
CULTURE AND INDIVIDUAL
FREEDOM
There must, therefore, be a mutual adaptation of
the individual to the culture and a “fitness” of the
environmental culture to the nature of the
individual.
No culture is a completely integrated system.
Despite this, many cultures manage to maintain
themselves through the acts of individuals who
are able to develop only impoverished and
frustrated personalities.
Yet such cultures could not exist at all unless
they provided at least minimum conditions for the
achievement of personality.
CULTURE AND INDIVIDUAL
FREEDOM
A culture, while endowing the individual with
an inheritance essential for the development
of personality, both enables him/her to
realize his/her freedom and limits the field
within which and the means by which he/she
can exercise it.
The basic framework it provides for the
formation of his/her individual personality
does not indeed fix its structure, but rather
offers possible, but limited, alternatives.
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
Culture is superior to instinct because it is
malleable or adaptable.
It is both learned and inherited and readily
determines how one understands and acts.
It also changes when its framing of reality is no
longer useful.
The system that shapes human behavior is
malleable.
People in their lifetime can transform their
culture and effectively reshape their being in the
world.
Culture is the versatile system of meaning-
giving.
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
The problem in this set-up, however, is that when
cultural systems orient people to act in a certain
way that is harmful, individuals tend to act
destructively toward others without conscious
decision.
Treating a woman badly in a community is a
thought that is worrisome because it means that
the unjust things we do are not the acts of the
free will.
On the other hand, it is hopeful because it means
that we behave the way we do due to systems
that can be changed.
Culture can change when its system of meaning
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
Microaggression as a form of violence.
Refers to “hostile, derogatory, or negative racial
slights and insults that can cause potentially
harmful or unpleasant psychological impacts on the
target person or group.
It is a subtle form of aggression that often works
against historically marginalized social groups.
Some effects of microaggression in clude
internalized emotions such as guilt, resentment,
anger as well as negative implication on
relationships.
Microaggression is also a from of social control.
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
Bakla – the term for homosexual male, is used to
berate and control men’s behavior.
The term “para kang babae”, when used on men, is
used to challenge masculinity and to show that
being woman-like is bad, thus demeaning women as
a gender.
Although seemingly harmless, these instances are a
form of correction that ensures that people do not
stray from the culture’s definition of the good.
In this case, men as strong and masculine is
considered ‘good’, and men as feminine is ‘bad’.
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
“Boys club” – a term that uses “banter” to
“marginalize women” to keep its power, and
inadvertently reminds women that they are only
allowed in certain spaces.
This form of control can be understood as violent
because it curtails individual freedoms by limiting
people in narrow definitions that may not
contribute to human flourishing.
Everyone has to take a closer look at the culture
and systems that define social structures in order
to bring about genuine development to all the
people of the world especially oppressed women.
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
It is difficult to change culture.
Humans are born into their ways of thinking.
Sexist or misogynist thinking is inherited, which is
why sexist jokes or harassment come so naturally to
some.
One important way is by consensually proposing
universal standards by which societies can be
measured.
Ideally, these universal standards are put forward by
international bodies such as United Nations.
CULTURES CAN CHANGE
If the people of the world can understand that
there are certain benchmarks of humane and just
behavior, then nations and their governments
could be criticized and held accountable for
violating universally agreed upon rules.
Today, with regard to human beings in general,
and women in particular, there are two (2) such
universal standard:
One is already accepted by most countries; and
Another is being proposed by a philosopher
especially for her advocacy of women’s rights.