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Connections Between Personality And Culture

It is my belief as a member of the church, being a returned missionary, that there is a definite connection between one's essence/identity/personality, and their ancestry/ethnicity/cultural background. I will make the controversial statement that, just as we belong in families, to a lesser extent, we belong to many wider communities, one of which is our ethnic heritage and nationality.
If someone were to say that they feel spiritually connected with English music, and they were English/had English ancestry , or from a similar background, it would make perfect sense to me. If someone had a French background , or something similar, and felt connected to say... French architecture, it makes perfect sense, and so on with Germans , Italians, Navajos, Japanese, Filipinos, etc. Many if not most aesthetics are universal though, and can be keenly loved by a broad range of people. The arts are a method of conveying one's essence or personality to the public, and with that, there is always an accompaning spirit that instills upon the mind and heart the background and ethnicity of that person, not to mention other things like moral character, personality, and desires.
When reading say... Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, it is difficult to miss the English (Tolkien), and Welsh (Lewis) flavors of their works. Of course, Tolkien's interests centered on the Nordic peoples and their mythology/history, and Lewis was as good as English, as there is difficulty separating the English and Welsh peoples. Still, you can feel their heritage though their words. Likewise with Kipling, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Frankel, or Achebe, etc.
You may choose to have more or less of a connection with your own ancestry or other cultures. But no matter what you do, your very makeup or "blood" will always reflect your real ancestry and ethnic connection(s)/family. It is healthy to love one's own ancestral cultures or nation(s). It can be unhealthy not to do so. To strive to make one's own nationality better is one of the things the gospel is all about-that-and certainly helping other nationalities as well.
It is well to remember that all ethnicities are equally capable of becoming like God, therefore, to be racist is wrong and contrary to church doctrine. There are certainly differnet degrees of racism, which are all more or less wrong, but there are some things which do not necessarily fall under racism. If you have a social/romantic preference for certain peoples and ethnicities, this is fine. I know of no doctrine that, while accompaning political correctness, teaches that ethnic preference for any kind of relationship is wrong. The church wants its members to have their agency to decide for themselves who they will spend time with. However, to be truly like Christ, the disciple of Christ must be open to people of all cultures as to their character and personal qualities when deciding to be friends or possibly more, just as Christ was. It is natural to be attracted to those who are like you in every way, or at least most ways, esp. in a romantic sense.
Reflect on this for a bit, if you will. Consider things like your connection with your ancestors and your ethnic background. Ultimately, you only have two divisions of people-good and evil. But there are billions of different kinds of people, and tribes, cultures, peoples, ethnicities, kingdoms, and nations are all made up of people that have more than just physical similarities amongst them. Its in the "blood". Each are not perfect, because they are made up of imperfect people. We want, or we should want to make each of them better, esp. our own.

Culture Personality Connections

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