What Maturity and Experience Does To Us

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Maturity and experience are two variables that alter our level of thinking, conformity and nonconformity. Humans are diverse, and their diversity is fused with differences in culture. That is why what is right to the culture A may be wrong to those in culture B. For instance, anyone who sends a gift of clock to a Chinese man may be seen as a threat to the receiver's life because in iconics, a gift of clock is a sign of death to Chinese; to some Yoruba, "kai" is an onomatopoeic expression that is used to scare away domestic animals, while to a Hausa man, it may mean a call or referencing to a male child; a child born out of wedlock is legitimate to some people in the Eastern part of Nigeria, bears his/her mothers surname, and is not, by law, regarded as a bastard; while to others, the child may be segregated upon for being born out of wedlock.

Regarding maturity, the level of knowledge attained may either make one tolerant to different ideologies, ways of life and cultural traits or an objectionist, resistant to change and hate-filled. The former is preferred based on universal ethics, reason being that the tolerant makes a healthy living.

It is quite disheartening that many people in this part of the world view matters regarding values and norms from a cultural prism they are conversant with, ignoring diversity. Some may have had a childhood experience of indoctrination or thoughts from tribal or religious angle that is intolerant of differences. Many among them view human traits from a monotonous perspective due to lack of contact with people having different norms.

Our society is now polarised into different noncohesive segments pretentiously united along ethno-religious cleavages. As a Nigerian, one needs to realise that this country consists over 300 distinct ethnicities, all of them have different cultures that shape their reasoning. Knowing the fact that families themselves have a particular norm unique to them, one needs to understand that singularization of social norms without recourse to universal ethics will always be unfair .
(Magnifico Suleiman)[https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2400906326616179&id=100000905054223]