La influencia de la televisión sobre el desarrollo socio

Culture is the patterns of behaviour and thinking that people living in social groups learn, create, and share. People in the same society share common behaviours

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and ways of thinking through culture. Culture is also shared with other people of different cultures. Since no human society exists in complete isolation, different societies also exchange and share culture. In fact, all societies have some interactions with each other, both out of curiosity, and because, even highly self-sufficient societies sometimes need assistance from their neighbours. Again, people use culture to flexibly and quickly adjust to changes in the world around them. Culture helps human societies to survive in changing natural environments. This is even the principal reason responsible for the evolution of culture. These aspects of culture help people to address the problems reality confronts them with.

In their interactions with the outside world and in their knowledge of the practice of advance directives, the Igbo person may actually settle for it in future. The advantages of advance directives can actually spur on anyone within the Igbo society to go for it. Not just going for it, there is also the possibility of recommending it to the other persons within the Igbo society. The relevant question here becomes: given the fact that in the traditional societies, the idea and possibility of advance directives is relegated to the background, with today‘s cultural influence, how can advance directives be practice effectively within the Igbo society since the basic tenets of the medical practice runs in conflict with traditional ideas? To this pertinent question, a possible answer could be that instead of one‘s autonomy taking paramount place in advance directives, the Igbo involvement in it will affirm the centrality of the community in the decisions of the advance directive.

In the Igbo society, the community guides and directs the individual to the extent that the community takes the centre in the dialogue with the individual. The community is made up of families, clans, and kindred who are united by blood in the line of their ancestors. And so if the Igbo were to decide or contemplate the issue of advance directive, it could the form of community‘s advance directive for her member;

this is what Dr. Lewis describes as ―Consensus Advance Directives‖.

If the possible advance directives to be practiced by the Igbo or approved by them will take the shape of a consensus type, a vital question will be: where does the community come in alongside the individual‘s desires in the whole advance directives?

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To what extent will both the influence of the community and the individual be felt in the decisions contained in the advance directives?

In the practice of advance directives, one basic fact about the Advance Directives is that before the document is drawn up, it is highly recommended that one‘s family of very close friends be made witnesses and judges over the document; for it is a valid legal document that cannot be overruled by family. In the Igbo consensus perspective, the relations and close friends will no longer be just witnesses and judges, but they will be deliberative voices before the wish is drawn. And so, before any proposition is made, the relations and friends will approve of it even though is about the life of just a member of the community/family. However, in the points of opposition between the individual‘s wish and the community‘s wish, given traditional practice, the community‘s wish will be taken. This may not be to relegate the importance and sense of individuality, but for the fact that two good heads are better than one, the community having more persons can know more than the individual and so are better to decide rather than the individual to decide with his/her limited knowledge.

More so, after the decision has been made, the document ends with the specifications of persons/offices where this document shall be filed after the signature of the patient. Also, there will be the signatories of the witnesses who testify that the document was effected in the patient‘s freewill and without duress. The community‘s signatory (especially the representatives) will be included and they will be given copies of the document to keep as being part of the decision made.

Moreover, another fact about the advance directives is that by its nature, only the patient who duly authorises it or the person charged with making decisions for the patient is the only person that can alter it and not by anyone else irrespective of the situation (and even when it is considered expedient to do otherwise). Under the consensus advance directives, the community can alter it when circumstances demand and they are not likely to face any legal action since they were part of the decision made. And so, in this type of advance directives, there will not be room for an individual to decide alone what he wants and the way he wants it; for the society will have a hand in the agreement since not only is one of them concerned but because what affects a member affects the general community.

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4.8 THE COMMUNITY’S ROLE IN CONSENSUS ADVANCE