Now at the end of this course I completely understand how important culture is for the human being—without culture humans could not survive, and vice versa, culture would not exist without humans. For my last reading of the class, I read couple of articles showing, in different aspects, how important is culture for the world—that culture is the key tool to survive and at the same time its diversity is essential as well. The readings for this week, brings together much of the things about culture that I have been learning through this course. With this post I get to my personal conclusions about culture.

The article that interested and impacted me the most is one by John Bodley. In this article, he describes the main contemporary struggles that humanity is going through right now. One of the main problems he says is the globalization and culture change. He says that global commercialization has become a process that has destroyed basically all previous cultural adaptations and has given humans the power to not only harm the environment, but to also harm themselves. One of the examples that impacted me the most is when he says that, the industrialization, world economy and overpopulation are the biggest problems humanity faces now. He gives the example of how humans, during the Paleolithic period, for around 3 million years lived hunting, gathering, foraging and creating small domestically cultures. He contrasts that showing that humans, with the creation of politics and commercialization, have threatened sustainability. He then shows how fast humanity has been changing concerning these aspects, and that that is what is coming between humans and the environment sustainability. He gives an example saying that most of the significant technological innovations, as antibiotics, television, computers, satellites, nuclear energy and mass organic compound appeared during the twentieth century. He adds that, “The present generation is experiencing the most profound changes humanity has ever seen”. He says that humans are experimenting changes at a too fast speed to adapt to the changes, and analyze its consequences to create a long-lasting survival method.

Bodley then explains how anthropology has the answer most of the problems humanity has. Going back tot the example of small cultures of the Paleolithic period, he says that, “Domestic scale cultures are humanity’s only cultural system with an archeologically demonstrated record of sustained adaptive record”. He then says that humans now have to learn from those ancient and contemporary small-domestic-tribal cultures in order to create sustainability and survive.

I once again confirm how important is the awareness of the world around us and the importance of learning from everything. It is much important as well to each individual think about what he or she does and how can each ne contribute in the creation of a better world. After all this reading and at the end of this course, as I have said several times in my precious posts, this course has really changed my vision of the world around me and it has change my life. Now I know many things concerning the world I live in that will help me in my life. This course has help me in my adaptation process through which I am going right now studying abroad. It has changed the way I see people here, and what I thought they think about me. Now I understand a lot of things I did not quite did before. Not only living in the United States, but this has also helped me understand the world we live in a broader sense. I am now more aware of problems and issues around the world that I did not know even existed. Before taking this course, I also had many culture stereotypes that I know are not like I though they were. I now think that everybody should learn these kinds of things so we could build a better world. I will carry all this knowledge throughout my life and little by little it would remarkably shape who I am and who I will become later, and will help me to contribute to this world in a better way.