Topic: Ethnocentrism
Source: My source for this entry is primarily an interaction I had last week with two young male missionaries from the Mormon Church, who had knocked on my front door while participating in their church’s missionary program. I also referred to the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, http://www.lds.org , as well as http://mormon.org/missionary-work/ for more information.
Relation: In reading about ethnocentrism and the ethnocentric fallacy,” the idea that our beliefs and behaviors are right and true, whereas those of other peoples are wrong or misguided,” in Robbins’ textbook, I came to realize that it is easy to fall into applying this fallacy in everyday common interactions with people, and I thought of any recent times that I was guilty of this. I found the contrast of how I reacted to what these guys were trying to with me about, as well as both of our approaches to the situation an interesting meeting of cultures, and felt it reflected this idea of ethnocentrism.
Description: It was around noon when there was a knock at the front door of my apartment. Two friendly looking young men were dressed in black slacks, white dress shirts and matching black ties. One of them holding a small stack of papers and copies of the Book of Mormon. I immediately knew they were missionaries, as I grew up in a town with a fairly large Mormon population. Missionary work is very important part of a young person in the Mormon church’s spirituality and is a sort of coming of age. It is a program in which young men, starting at age 18, and women, starting at age 21, travel to another part of the world away from their families, generally 2 years for men and 18 months for women, and where they spend a significant portion of their time both handing out copies of the Book of Mormon, and speaking with people about the gospel and their beliefs.
My perspective in the situation with the two was that of a 20 year old college student who identifies as agnostic and generally doesn’t talk to strangers about religion. They gave me a small flyer for the local Mormon church, then asked if I knew of “the lord and savior Jesus Christ,” and if they could speak with me about him. I entered into my usual routine, from past experiences with missionaries, in which I apologetically try to get them to leave me alone: shaking my head and saying things like “I’m sorry but no thank you” or “you’re kind of talking to the wrong person.” While in my head feeling the urge to tell them my beliefs, and rant about evolution or my personal thoughts on the beauty of uncertainty. They persisted for a few more moments to try and convince me to take a copy of their book and read about the “Kingdom of Heaven”, but it wasn’t too much longer before they respectfully left my doorstep at my request.
Commentary/Analysis:
In looking back on this interaction it stood out to me how ethnocentrism can easily occur in everyday situations between people of different cultural backgrounds. What was this apparent need to share, and even push one’s own “right and true” beliefs on others? Or on the other side of the conversation to reject and not even want to hear or consider another’s beliefs as “right or true” because they conflict with one’s own. The young men who tried talking to me believed that my world could be completely changed if I could listen to the words of their God. Just as I believed that they had been misled into thinking their certainty was plausible. We were both committing the ethnocentric fallacy, and were at a stand still. This makes me wonder how interactions like this must take in the United States on a fairly regular basis as we have so many different religious and spiritual backgrounds present, and so must affect other characteristics of our society and block a significant amount of dialogue among one another.
Hey Ruby, I think your analysis of yourself here is great. I too have had a similar experience and found myself doing the same types of responses you mentioned when confronted with door to door missionaries. I have always struggled in deciding whether or not I wanted to share my own beliefs with other people because a lot of times people are already decided on the "truth" and I know I don't like when people push their beliefs on me; becomes a sensitive issue. This problem of ethnocentric fallacy does create a lot of division even within similar denominations of religion and is why there are so many different "brands" of religion. Being aware of this is hard to do in the moment and I commend your efforts. Good insight
ReplyDeleteI think Ethnocentrism has a major affect on how people communicate. Currently my grandmother and one of my aunts are fighting because of my aunt thinking her way of life is the best and everyone should follow her. My grandmother is a night owl, stays up all night and sleeps all day. She is very active at night whither its playing card games, exercising or reading. My aunt believes that this is wrong and she should get up at 8am and go to bed at 10 pm like "normal people." When they had this argument my grandmother had her feelings hurt and this way of thinking has affected their relationship. So i believe it is affects the way we communicate with each other. We either sensor our words or we ignore other people's words if we don't agree with each other.
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