Co-cultures “are groups of people who share values, customs, and norms related to mutual interests or characteristics besides their national citizenship” (Floyd 41). “Most people identify with multiple co-cultures at once” such as for their age group, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic level, language, etc. (Floyd 42). I belong to co-cultures such as a college student, agnosticism, working class, female, wanderlust, and English. Belonging to a co-culture not only allows a person to identify with small groups of people, but it also can influence our attitude, beliefs, values, perceptions and behaviors we have/hold.
My co-culture as a college student is based on age and level of education. Being a college student affects my beliefs and perceptions of others outside my co-culture. As a college student, I believe that most people go or should go to college after high school and perceive that most people in college to be of a certain age group, mainly those in their late teens to 20s. Not only am I a college-student, but I’m also part of the working class which affects my beliefs and values. As part of the working class, I believe that a person can get nowhere in life without working for what they earned. As a worker, I think people should hold values such as perseverance, motivation, and commitment. People should have perseverance to understand that nothing is given in life and that nothing meaningful comes without work, motivation to understand why someone works towards a particular goal and commitment to work harder.
As a more individualistic person, I am part of smaller co-cultures such as agnosticism and wanderlust. Being an agnosticism greatly affects my beliefs more than anything. As an agnostic, I neither believe or disbelieve in a higher power, I hold the view that any higher power is unknown and probably unknowable widely. Furthermore, I am a wanderlust person, meaning I have a strong desire to travel and explore the world. Being a wanderlust person affects my attitude and behavior towards others. My attitude and behavior is affected as a wanderlust person because interacting with new people and immersing myself in a new culture affects how open I am towards a person, and being exposed to different cultures will help me become less judgmental of others different from myself.
Being ethical can be simply defined as “behavior right in the moral sense” meaning truthful, fair and honest. Whether imposing a culture on another is ethical or unethical, I would have to say it is unethical and that people should respect a culture’s values. According to the definition of ethics, forcing a culture on another is making the person being forced to lie to themselves about what they truly believe in. There have been many situations throughout history in which different cultures have tried to force their beliefs on another, such as when Native Americans were forced to assimilate their children into American boarding schools. When Native Americans were forced to assimilate their children in boarding school, the children were forbidden to use their own names, language, and to practice their own religion. These acts were unethical because it was unfair for Native American children to be isolated from their families to assimilate in a culture that views them as inferior to themselves, children were also forced to lie to themselves of who they were and where they originally came from. Overall forcing a culture on another is unethical and history has proven that the results never justify the means.
