Culture, Change, and Democracy: A Historical Overview

What Causes Genuine and Long-Lasting Change in a Culture?

Consider What Causes Genuine And Long-Lasting Change In a Culture? In Your Lifetime What Are The Biggest Changes You Have Witnessed In Our Culture And Are These Changes, In General, Positive Or Negative? Why? Are You a Lover Or Hater Of Cultural Change?

Of All The Cultural Advances In Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt And Ancient China And India, Which, In Your Opinion, Is The Most Important And Why?

According To Montesquieu, Democracy Exists  When The Body Of The People Is Possessed Of The Supreme Power.  What Does This Mean To You? If a Democracy Is Rule By The People, All People Still Need Heroes Who Embody Heroic Values.  What Might a Democratic Hero Look Like? Can You Give Any Examples?

How Does Ancient Greece Use Artistic Production To Begin To Formulate Certain Ideas About Heroes?  What Do The Ancient Greeks Consider Heroic?

There are several things in the world that helps in the long lasting change of the cultures. These reasons are really very interesting and they should be studied properly go through the trends of changing culture. In my opinion, proper education about the culture and its latent factors are very crucial for the changes (Banks: 46). A person cannot have the idea about the proper designs of the paintings and other examples of architecture and sculpture in the earlier times. The cultural change can take place can take place only during the time when a particular culture is educated or take the initiatives to become more educated.

It would give them the opportunity to engage with the new things in various cultures and embrace the good things in them. Otherwise, they cannot gain the idea about the changes in the cultures (Montgomery: 48). I also believe education can provide long lasting change in cultures and it will be genuine by all regards as well. I have gone through the realization that cultures can be improved and embrace long lasting changes if people show thei zeal to get educated and go to college. The changes I have noticed in my culture within my lifetime are very positive.

It is because people within my culture have looked to get more educated and implement those teachings in their practical lives. I love this aspect of cultural changes because I believe their initiatives can definitely change the society along with give respect to all existing norms of the society. In my opinion, cultural changes are very necessary to keep us updated about new trends in society and helping us to improve. These cultural changes will bring the best outcomes so education can play the most vital role in this aspect. The importance of cultural change can be felt when a culture is unable to adapt with recent changes and lags behind.

The Biggest Changes Witnessed in Our Culture: Positive or Negative?

The changes are very crucial to get an idea about the advancements in cultures of various countries. Some of the most important ancient cultures in the world are ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India. All these four cultures are regarded as very crucial for the development of the ancient world and cultural changes from ancient to the modern (Montgomery: 35). The comparisons and contrasts are necessary to identify which of these cultures had the major impacts on the lives of common people. The features of all these civilizations have some positives and negatives. These similarities and differences are indeed very crucial to understand how new cultures came to existence and catered to the needs of people (Montgomery: 48).

It has found after reading the chapter 1 that all the civilizations had introduced the system of irrigation for the development of their cultures and improving the irrigation. Education has been one of the main improvement factors for India and Mesopotamia mostly. The invention of the digit 0 and 1 to 9 had been done in India. Here India gets the upper hand because of their tendency to embrace education. Egyptians improved their architecture by creating pyramids. This was one of the most unique architectural brilliance ever created. In Egypt, slaves had the rights to earn their freedom (Shephard: 100). Therefore, all the civilizations had their unique sets of culture and they contributed many important things for the development of society.

The irrigation systems and architectural supremacy had been seen in both China and Egypt. The Great Wall of China was built under the influence of Chinese culture they also invented sundial and seismograph machine (Banks: 46) However, it can be said that ancient Chinese and Egyptian cultures were most important but the contribution of other cultures must be acknowledged in social development of the globe as well (Fagan and Scarr: 30).

According to Montesquieu, it has been said that democracy is basically the rule of the people and their ability to implement the supreme power for the benefits of the country. It has often been seen that many countries give their supreme power to national leaders of some specific political parties (Banks: 22). These political parties aim to run the country according to their ideologies. Here the opinions of the common people are not given any recognition. The supreme power of the country is very controversial for me. It is because there have been several examples in the history that common people were engaged in several conflicts and they misused that supreme power (Edmunds: 27).

Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and India: Which is Most Important?

As a result provincial conflicts completely ruined the unity of the country. In this way, supreme power belonging to the common people can be fatal. On the other hand, people should learn to understand the true meaning of power. Then only they can use that power for the welfare of the human beings (Mairs: 75). Otherwise, conflicts among people will lead to division of that particular country into several provinces. The presence of a centralized government is highly important to show how to implement power within the territories of democratic countries. The elected representatives of the government will reflect the voice of commoners to practice democracy in countries (Dunn: 88).

The presence of democratic hero is crucial in democratic countries since he will be the savior of democracy and protect the rights of common people. These democratic heroes will be presented as the idols who will present all the problems, sufferings and miseries of their countries (Edmunds: 27). The problems should be identified by the common people and find viable mediums top reach those to the protector of democracy or democratic hero. The democratic hero will be the person who will give his efforts to stop the conflicts between opposing parties and make them understand the true meaning of democracy. One of the greatest ever democratic heroes that world has ever seen was Nelson Mandela. His desperate attempt to keep up democracy had been appreciated throughout the world. He was in jail for more than 25yers for questioning British dominance in Africa. After he came back from prison, he became the President of South Africa and gave all the black people in the country their rights for freedom and equality.

Greek has always been the place of central attraction regarding architecture, sculpture and art. There have been several artistic things that were considered to be the proper depiction of heroes. These heroes were courageous, merciful and knew how to serve justice among common men (Mairs: 75). It has been noted from several historical records that Greek people used shrines, vases, statues and various things that were mainly made out of bronze. Various other metals had been used in making these things as well.

These statues and other things had been used because they were thought to be immortal things. These pieces of immortal statues had been worshipped by Greeks as well. These immortal statues were thought to be democratic heroes (Tziovas: 66). Some examples of these creations are the Snake Goddess or Priestess from Crete, Figurine of a woman from the Cyclades, the Mask of Agamemnon and many others. All these are historical treasures and Greeks believed these things to be heroic in every form. They believed these heroes will protect their future and democracy in the country (Apple: 89).

According to the ancient Greeks, heroes were the people who had committed some mighty deeds and possessed some special abilities as well (Finlayso: 115). All these deeds were of the same stature to Gods and they believed in worshipping these people as their Gods. Therefore, they were deemed as heroes and worthy to be worshipped. One of the examples of Greek hero was Hercules because he possessed enormous strength.

References

Apple, Michael W. Cultural and economic reproduction in education: Essays on class, ideology and the state. Routledge, 2017.

Banks, James A. Cultural diversity and education: Foundations, curriculum, and teaching. Routledge, 2015.

Dunn, John. Setting the people free: The story of democracy. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Edmunds, Lowell, ed. Approaches to Greek myth. JHU Press, 2014.

Fagan, Brian M., and Chris Scarre. Ancient civilizations. Routledge, 2016.

Finlayson, Alan. "Becoming a democratic audience." The Grammar of Politics and Performance. Routledge, 2014. 109-121.

Mairs, Rachel. "Heroes and philosophers? Greek personal names and their bearers in hellenistic Bactria." The Silk Road: Interwoven History 1 (2015): 71-100.

Montgomery, Scott L., and Alok Kumar. A history of Science in world cultures: voices of knowledge. Routledge, 2015.

Shephard, Roy J. "Examples of early city life from ancient Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Israel, India and China: health as a gift of the gods." An Illustrated History of Health and Fitness, from Pre-History to our Post-Modern World. Springer, Cham, 2015. 73-154.

Tziovas, DÄ“mÄ“trÄ“s, ed. Re-imagining the Past: Antiquity and modern Greek culture. Oxford University Press, USA, 2014.