It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood.
Interpretation
Understanding culture requires analyzing and comparing different cultural elements.
This quote by Hu Shih emphasizes the importance of interaction and comparison in appreciating the diverse values of cultural elements. It suggests that only by engaging with and evaluating various cultural aspects can we truly discern their significance or lack thereof, highlighting the necessity of critical thinking in cultural analysis.
In practice
This quote could be used in a lecture about cultural studies.
The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence.
Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.
No hero is mortal till he dies.
Sometimes immense things, like war and death and aging, are best seen from the corner of the eye and written of only obliquely, with tremendous lightness.
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