On Monday I really enjoyed the question asked by one of the Russian students wondering how we stimulate our spiritual (meaning intellectual) development. This was not necessarily a surprising comment but rather, uncommon and sparked my interest.
This led me to think about two things. First of all, I think we completely overlook how entirely different our minds work in comparison to people of different people groups. This goes to show our cultural influences impact us more than we even realize. We realize the way we dress, the ways we view our bodies, the phrases we use, the foods we like, the careers we pursue are affected by culture. But part of what we don't realize is that many things aren't, "Just the way things are." For instance, some of their questions. I think it is a commonality between our societies to want to better our intellectual self, but this is not something people from the United States really verbalize. To hear him (I wish I could remember the Russian student's names better!!), ask this question was thought provoking.
But on the other hand, knowing how our culture subliminally impacts the ways we do everything: how we act, talk, think, and shape our opinions, can transversely show how we are not impacted by culture, but rather, the similarities in our psychology between people who do not influence one another, can allude to
non-culturally impacted operations- a more innate or intuitive part of us. Wanting to be deep, to think spiritual, intellectual thoughts and develop our minds in a philosophical quest to discover things such as the importance of life or questioning one's longheld values is a topic we may or may not talk about in "ice-breaking" conversations but it's something most people venture to think about within themselves.
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