What People Should be Cautious in Communities Membership

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What People Should be Cautious in Communities Membership
Dinaw Mengestu portrays the significance of communities, particularly in how they maintain stability by bolstering standards of behavior and traditions. In particular, they enable individuals to have a sense of belonging. Young people develop their behaviors based on the values, morals, and norms in their respective communities. As such, communities unite individuals and help them to live in an organized manner. Individuals serve these groups by obeying the established rules. For example, one cannot engage in behaviors that are highly condemned by a particular community since the person might be considered as an outcast. However, when it comes to membership in various communities, people need to be cautious about conflicts that might affect their relationship with others adversely.
Not all the established regulations and practices in a community should be followed blindly. The first reading asserts that “over-relying on certain standards of behavior or traditions within a community can cause people to stop questioning how these practices affect the health of the community” (“Introduction to Community” 90). On that note, the author brings to attention that community members should not follow things blindly. Even though individuals should remain loyal to the groups where they belong, they need to challenge and question various traditions or standards of behavior. Besides, it is not everything that a community accepts has significance in people’s lives. For example, if a particular community practices wife inheritance, men should be cautious about the cause of death of a woman’s partner before bringing her new wife home. If the cause of death was a sexually transmitted disease, there is a likelihood that the wife inheritor will suffer from a similar health problem, which might compromise his health and lead to death. That is the reason why people should question some traditions and ignore those that can affect their well-being negatively. Dinaw Mengestu makes it clear that the community shapes an individual’s behavior. The individual says, “Growing up, one of my father’s favorite sayings was, “Remember, you are Ethiopian,” even though, of course, there was nothing for me to remember apart from the bits of nostalgia and culture my parents had imparted” (Mengestu 124). At this juncture, the author portrays that individuals identify themselves to belong to the place where they were born. However, migrating to other regions when young makes a person to be confused and feel like one has no home. Mengestu affirms that culture should not restrict individuals from becoming someone else so that they can blend with other communities well. If Mengestu was not flexible enough to acculturation and assimilation of the American way of living, he would not have been a prominent writer today. However, all the experiences he acquired during his transition from Ethiopian to American culture shaped him to be a better person.
Although the community offers help to its members, it is not guarantee that people get the appropriate assistance. Many community members ...