Own Culture Of Thoughts And Beliefs example essay topic

Susan Clothier Dr. Malik Midterm take-home exam 6, March 20011. The importance of the study of world history to me personally as an American is very significant because I hope to find a career where I will work with many diverse people and I not only want to know them, but I want to have an understanding of where they came from in order to associate with them better. Another reason is that an American can be from any culture from around the world. Americans aren't any certain race or religion, so we have to understand our fellow citizens just as they need to understand us. I was in definite need of a course like this because before I started taking this class I had no idea of the simple concept of the different beliefs between Hinduism and Judaism. I had heard of the different religions vaguely in high school, but was never actually taught about them.

I didn't even know that Jews did not eat pig because they thought it was a descendant of the devil. If I weren't to know that, somewhere down the road I might have offered one of my Jewish friends a ham sandwich and that would have been a very embarrassing situation. I now believe that I am a better informed American about fellow man in other parts of the world, but I still hope to learn more about them because I feel that we have only scratched the surface in class. I now know about many different religions such as: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and even more about my own religion Christianity.

Although I know what they believe and how they came about their religious freedom, I hope to learn about how they celebrate and worship their religions and maybe to see how their cultures are influenced by them. Such as if there are certain holidays where they might get out of work, or how the people of different religions react towards each other and their holidays. I now realize that because I am an American and my country is a super power, that I do not have a right to think that my religion or culture is more important than anyone else's. I must respect their beliefs just as they respect mine.

I bet if you were to ask anyone from any culture what Christmas was, they would know automatically that it is a Christian holiday. And because of this I think that I should know what Hanukkah is, or who the Buddha was and what he represented. Every society wants to be respected and known for their different culture and beliefs. Because of this course, I now realize that if I expect anyone to understand me, that I should already try to have an understanding of them.

2. The definition of civilized is to bring or come out of a primitive or savage condition to a higher level of social organization and of cultural and scientific development. To begin, or give birth to a civilization there must be some essential factors, such as: people who are willing to come together with political, social, and economic organizations to build a larger and united community, education, a notion of law to govern its members, an atmosphere of peace, the ability to create art, to generate science and philosophy to explain the larger world, and to create theology. After a civilization acquires all of these it must make it's own culture of thoughts and beliefs that everyone follows and believes to grow and flourish as a successful civilization.

Each one of these factors are necessary because without one there wouldn't be a unique culture because then that civilization would have to borrow other civilizations thoughts and ideas therefore now making that first civilization an offspring of the second. The Sumerian culture is known for its set of values and techniques. The first thing that made them stand out was their invention of writing which was called cuneiform. Then from there it evolved into ideograms, then they learned to use signs to represent sounds which is called the phonetic use of signs.

This system of writing was very complicated, but it was taught and learned by many which increased their intelligence, discipline, and culture. They also flourished in mathematics. Sumerian people were very much involved with their religion and aimed to please their gods. They built their communities around their religious temples and worshiped together their beliefs and rituals.

Everyone in the community also had a ranking that they couldn't move out of, this made it easy to set rules for certain people and they were abide d by. For the most part, the Sumerians had the factors to be a successful civilization because they established a basic social, economic, and intellectual pattern, but the Sumerians were taken over by the Semites because they had a stronger army. Even though the Sumerians were conquered many of their thoughts and inventions carried on. The Indus Valley civilization, which is noted to be the first civilization in India, was a very complex and planned out civilization. It had straight streets, uniform houses, and underground sewers. The Indus civilization was spread over a large amount of area, which shows that they had a very uniform government to control this large area.

They had standardized weights, ports along the sea, and a set religion. The Indus civilization had everything that it needed to be a successful civilization and it was for a while, but because of abandonment of the area which was thought to be because of an earthquake, led this civilization to become deserted. Although both civilizations are long gone, their inventions and some of their political and religious ways are still around in today's culture.