Culture
Syrians value strong family ties. Unlike young Americans, young Syrians find leaving their family unnecessary to set up their independence; the reason being, is that Syrian society just like Southwest Asia, North Africa and the wider Eastern world, places great emphasis on the group rather than the individual. In the West the individual is key and the group is secondary. Respect and social status are important in Syrian societies. Men are respected for their financial success or their honesty and sincerity. Syrians are characterized by their magnanimity and graciousness, ethics which are integral to Syrian life." However, much of the Syrian traditions have diminished with time, mainly due to the fast pace of life in America which encourages individual independence.
Read more about this topic: Syrian American
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)