Living On Borrowed Cultures

The world has a culture. Every culture extant in the world contributes towards this collective culture. One should avoid shunning every other culture just because one believes that one hails from a particular culture. To do so is limiting and often leads to negative discrimination. It is often this obsession with history that causes bigotry and cultural snobbery. If one has the discipline to do so, one should learn to take the best (according to one's gauge) out of every culture encountered and thus improve the culture one is in. Otherwise, the culture would stagnate within the confines it sets for itself and would have a hard time growing.

Adopting aspects of other cultures does not denote losing one's heritage. On the contrary, it adds to one's heritage, for this enables future generations to have more under them than merely what they, as a race, started off with.

One's self identification should not come from the mere sense of belonging to a "community". Chances are that this said "community" would constitute but a fraction of what the world has to offer. It is sad that one can feel lost, uprooted or aimless merely because one does not anchor oneself in the culture of one's ancestors. This is especially true given that the real "culture" in the world is world culture. The problem is that many people have a hard time perceiving this, and choose instead to segregate themselves into cultural cliques, attempting to preserve their cultural "heritage". While easy to maintain, this siege mentality can only lead to the establishment of an "us" and "them", possibly with an unhealthy focus on excluding the "other".