Is cultural diversity good or bad in the society?

Answer 1

Cultural diversity is nothing more than a difference from the majority. In any culture, there is a majority and minority in various shapes and forms. Culture is a set of norms that set standards for a society of what is acceptable behavior. In an around the world, diverse culture has evolved which distinguishes from other cultures. Generally, cultural diversity includes norms, values, religion, ethos, ethnic background and many more. Complex variety of cultures are admired and appreciated as human experience. However, these diverse nature of culture would lead to differentiation and may lead to deviance and violence, and even a cultural genocide.

Today, some nation on earth claims to be multicultural, while many nations adhere to their culture and seeks to set up dominance over other culture. Some nations end up promoting and preserving their age-old culture as counter step to newly emerging western culture.

In every culture, there are basic standards for social interaction such as personal space distance, eye contact, amount of body language displayed in public, negotiating style, etc.

In Bhutan, the culture is unique from other nations. Culture of Bhutan is mostly rooted to deep Buddhist values, which is passive and nonviolent, compared to other western culture. In other cultures, they may stand closer or farther than we are comfortable, may view direct eye contact as rude, be more or less open to displaying body language, and negotiate more indirectly, but Bhutanese have norms adopted- respecting elders from time immemorial.

In other society, there is a notion of assuming that those who differ from their norms are inferior, and they become xenophobic. Such trends may be found in some Muslim countries where they seek to establish hegemony over other religion and culture.

While on other hand, cultural diversity makes the country richer by making it a more interesting place to live in. For instance, America welcomes diverse culture starting from the way they dine to the way they speak. Just think how boring a meal would be without Chinese, Mexican, Japanese, Italian, German, French, and Indian food. Such diverse trends of eating and diverse food are found in America. In the eyes of other nation across the seas, such trends are admired and emulated.

Cultural diversity also makes the country stronger and better, making able to compete in the new global economy. People from diverse cultures bring new language skills, new ways of thinking, and creative solutions to difficult problems.

However, without a strong cultural identity, country like Bhutan in the Himalayas, have notion that their country's sovereignty is at stake. With new paradigm of philosophy, GNH focuses on preserving the culture with unity. Looking at neighbor, China and her cultural cult of colonizing Tibet reminds of constant threat of losing the nations identity, if the nation's culture is submerged and blended with other alien culture. With this, the Bhutanese bureaucrats and citizens collectively works to contain the dissolution of Bhutanese culture rooted deeply in Buddhism, which otherwise invites many critics today.

Significantly, in the eyes of other western nations, Bhutanese culture has gained admiration and appreciation. However, as cultural diversity has likelihood of leading to violence, Bhutan as dark buried history, which justifies violence and uprising due to cultural diversity. As a sociologist, I can pop my own opinion that the southern Bhutanese Nepalese uprising of early 1990s was because of diverse culture. In my opinion, an attempt from Bhutanese government to set hegemony over sub culture of Bhutanese Nepalese lead to new uprising in which they struggled to sustain their culture. In doing so, they took refuge to violence and the government was compelled to counter act. Thus, cultural diversity may gain admiration, but it has high chances to create barrier and lead to violence often leading to dark and clandestine relation with legitimate and authoritative de facto.

Thus, in pursuit of cultural diversity, one should keep in mind that it should not be in the interest that would challenge the status quo of government and state which is in fact the custodian of peace and tranquility.