Culture shock can be an excellent lesson in relative values and in understanding human differences. The reason culture shock occurs is that we are not prepared for these differences. Because of the way we are taught our culture, we are all ethnocentric. This term comes from the Greek root ethnos, meaning a people or group. Thus, it refers to the fact that our outlook or world view is centered on our own way of life. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own patterns of behavior are the best: the most natural, beautiful, right, or important. Therefore, other people, to the extent that they live differently, live by standards that are inhuman, irrational, unnatural, or wrong.