CULTURE IN MORAL BEHAVIOR

Learning Outcomes:

1. Discuss what culture is, how this particular culture shapes moral behavior, and formed a positive
Filipino behavior.
2. Analyze crucial qualities of the Filipino moral identity in their own moral experiences;
3. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of some Filipino trait, and evaluate the Filipino character that
needs to be changed.
4. Recall defining moments in their moral formation, and then identify and articulate each stage of
moral development.
5. Identify and articulate each stage of moral development.
6. Check their personal growth and three other cases, against the stages of development.

Introduction:

This section will discuss what culture is, how culture shapes moral behavior, cultural relativism, and
the Filipino moral identity. It will cite one Filipino culture then discuss how this particular culture formed a
positive Filipino behavior. In the discussion, you will look into the qualities of the Filipino moral identity and
evaluate elements that need to be changed. Learn, too, about the strengths and weaknesses of some
Filipino moral trait. On the discussion, you will learn how this particular Filipino culture produced negative
Filipino attitude. Let us delve also how moral character develops.

Discussion:

What is culture?

It is commonly said that culture is all around us. Practically, culture appears to be an actual part of
our social life as well as our personality. For some, culture is a quality that some people have more than
others: how 'cultured' somebody is depends on some factors like status, class, education, and taste in
music or film, and speech habits. By attending symphonies, plays, operas, and poetry readings, some show
that they appreciate culture more than others. Sometimes, people visit places like museums or art galleries
to increase their so-called 'cultural awareness:' Probably, you have heard somebody in the cultural elite"
bemoan the deplorable 'popular culture' of TV, graphically violent computer games, mass-marketed movies,
pierced navels, tattoos, and rock or rap music.

The term culture is so complex that it is not easy to define. In one sense, culture is used to denote
that which is related to the arts and humanities. But in a broader sense, culture denotes the practices,
beliefs, and perceptions of a given society. It is in this sense that culture is often opposed with ‘savagery
that is, being 'cultured' is seen as a product of a certain evolvement from a natural state.

The following are other definitions of the term culture ('Culture Detinition, n.d.):

a. Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings,
hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects
and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group
striving.
b. Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols,
constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the
essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems
may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences
upon further action.

c. Culture is the sum total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be
the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation

d. Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated
experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning

e. Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a groups skills, knowledge, attitudes,
values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society
througn its institutions.

Defined broadly therefore, culture includes all the things individuals learn while growing up among
particular group: attitudes, standards of morality, rules of etiquette, perceptions of reality, language, notions
about the proper way to live, beliefs about how females and males should interact, ideas about how the
world works and so forth. We call this cultural knowledge.

Culture's Role in Moral Behavior

Based on the definitions of culture above, it is not hard to pinpoint the role of the culture in one's
moral behavior. A culture is a 'way of life' of a group of people, and this so-called 'way of life' actually
includes moral values and behaviors, along with knowledge, beliefs, symbols that they accept, generally
without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation
to the next" ('Culture Definition, n.d.).

Culture is learned as children grow up in society and discover how their parents and others around
them interpret the world. In our society, we learn to distinguish objects such as cars, windows, houses,
children, and food; recognize attributes like sharp, hot, beautiful, and humid; classify and perform different
kinds of acts; and even "evaluate what is [morally) good and bad and to judge when an unusual action is
appropriate or inappropriate" (Mañebog & Peña, 2016).

Many aspects of morality are taught. People learn moral and aspects of right or wrong from
transmitters of culture: respective parents, teachers, novels, films, and television. Observing or watching
them, people develop a set idea of what is right and wrong, and what is acceptable and what is not.

Even experientially, it is improbable, if not impossible, to live in a society without being affected by
its culture. It follows too that it is hard to grow up in a particular culture without being impacted by how it
views morality or what is ethically right or wrong. Anthropologically speaking, culture-including moral values,
beliefs, and behavior-is learned from other people while growing up in a particular society or group; is widely
shared by the members of that society or group; and so profoundly affects the thoughts, actions, and
feelings of people in that group that individuals are a product of their culture" and "learning a culture is an
essential part of human development" (De Guzman & Peña, 2016).
 Social learning is the process by which individuals acquire knowledge from others in the groups to
which they belong, as a normal part of childhood. The process by which infants and children socially learn
the culture, including morality, of those around them is called enculturation or socialization.

How does culture define Moral Behavior?

One of the revered founders of Western philosophy - Plato in his famous philosophical work, The
Republic cited three critical elements that jointly influence the human persons moral development. These
elements are native traits (or what we might call genetic characteristics); early childhood experience; and
one's cultural surroundings (Pekarsky, 1998).

Plato implied that if a person's cultural surroundings reward conformity to agreeable norms it would
lead the person to behave much better and quell undesirable conduct He also expressed that the power of
culture over an individual is more potent in children because they do not have any pre-existing values. The
child's cultural surroundings create these values and dispositions. Thus, Plato insisted that a child's cultural
surrounding should "express the image of a noble character"; that role models should display the conduct
of a proper human being because the behavior of the adults serves as the child’s moral foundation as he
or she grows and develops (Cornford, 1966; Pekarsky, 1998).