Cultural Tradition

Often, people (especially Americans) tend to think that other cultures who practice different traditions or "rituals" are foolish. One great way to contrast the traditions and cultures of two societies is Europe and America. Because of the close political relations and similar government styles, Europe and the United States are bound very closely together, and the two cultures seem very similar. Even in these incredibly close societies, however, many discrepancies still exist between the two. One example is the system of measurement used, as Europe uses the metric system while America is still stuck with the standard system. Even through the metric system is clearly superior in the modern world, we stay with the same system we've used for centuries because of tradition (probably also because of cost too). Surely, European countries must look down on us, saying, "They'll have to replace it eventually, why don't they switch to metric?". For Americans, the metric system seems so familiar and logical, that we don't even give it a second though. We don't think of ourselves as "dumb", for using a system that is strange and illogical, but yet we consider other cultures that do illogical things in the name of tradition to be just that. We don't think of ourselves as "ritualistic", we just have, as some people might say, "a different way of doing things". In "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema", the person observing American culture notes that, "Man's only hope is... powerful influences of ritual and ceremony", showing how even though we don't see it as ritualistic, which often has a primitive connotation, many of our traditions could be perceived that way, and the same thing is true with the traditions of other cultures.