Ever notice how people from other countries, from other backgrounds, don’t always respond the way you might expect? Ever wondered why that might be? Ever seen someone take the easy way out and simply ascribe the differences in behavior to things they can see instead of really getting to know the individual or their background? Sometimes it’s like we walk around viewing the world through blinders . . . cultural blinders.
You know what blinders are, right? Kind of like Oakleys for horses. Blinders block out a horse’s peripheral vision thereby reducing the chance it will be spooked by the appearance of something unexpected. This gives a rider or, in the case of draft animals the driver, more control. Blinders provide that control, however, by limiting what the horse can see.
We all go through life wearing our own cultural blinders, ways of thinking that limit what we actually perceive. They routinely force us into making false assessments of that which we observe, encouraging us to project our own cultural norms onto others.
To some degree this is just a natural reflection of how our brains work. We are—each of us—the product of our environment. ESPECIALLY the environment that surrounds us when we are young and soaking in life lessons like a sponge. And just like that nasty, germ-ridden implement next to the kitchen sink, we can sometimes pick up a lot of really unhelpful things along the way.
Culture is what surrounds us daily. The elements of our culture describe for us how the world around us functions. Because children grow up sponging in information as they go, what they’ve learned affects how they view the world and, in effect, how they think. Thus, one’s culture virtually dictates how one comprehends, approaches, and solves life’s problems. Placing this into the binary construct for which we humans habitually use to categorize virtually everything, this, to you and me, is what is considered “normal.” Anything else then is “abnormal” or even “strange.”
Each culture has developed a range of what is considered acceptable and the variation evident in one culture may far exceed the range of behaviors allowable in another. That said, once you cross that cultural boundary, meeting someone from far, far away, all bets are off. Attempting to apply one culture’s rules of acceptability—what is deemed normal or even natural—when observing someone from another can never be anything more than pure folly.
Each of the hundreds of cultures found sprinkled across the surface of our planet developed the way it did for a reason, and while those reasons may seem silly by today’s standards, they likely developed long enough ago that the reasons themselves no longer have any real significance. Like the bowling ball rolling down a steep hill, culture has an inertia and so can be very difficult to change direction. Generally the older the culture, the more difficult—and time consuming—it can be to alter in the present. And by time consuming I mean time measured in generations!
So what? Why does any of this matter? Well, it matters a lot. Truly comprehending another culture takes time, it takes a willingness to learn and to study, and it takes patience. Most importantly, perhaps, it requires your understanding that the way you think and live is not the only way to think and live. That another culture isn’t wrong, per se, it’s just different.
I’m a firm believer that nobody can naturally see their own culture. The tenets of culture are so ingrained in our daily activities while growing up we don’t recognize them as anything other than simply the way the world is. It’s only when we bump up against someone else's “way it is” that we are offered the opportunity to comprehend there really is more than one way to live life and see the world.
A couple of examples are in order to illustrate the point here. As a typical kid from a Mid-Western American background I’d been told since the day I weaned from the bottle that I should finish all the food on my plate. Apparently there were starving children around the world and I somehow disrespected their struggle for life by not finishing my meal. In truth I’d have gladly packaged up the oyster stew (blech!!!) or anything Mom made with mushrooms in it, and sent it to them first class with my compliments. Still, the lesson was clear, not to finish the meal set before me was rude and thus unacceptable behavior.
Fast forward to my first meal at my soon-to-be in-laws’ home in Seoul, Korea. The plate before me was stacked with delicious morsels and I ate them all. More food materialized and, being a healthy twenty-four year-old, I eagerly gobbled that up as well, starting to feel that perhaps I was getting full. Satisfied that I’d done my duty and respected my host and hostess, imagine my surprise when the plate magically filled up AGAIN. Dutifully I reached deep within and ate “what was set before me.” Problem was now I started to feel like I was about to burst. Still, not wanting to disappoint my parents and all the generations who’d gone before, I kept eating until it felt like the backup of food was physically pressing my eyeballs up into my brain. Stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, I finally stopped and excused myself, leaving—to my great shame—enough food on the plate to feed a small village somewhere. Didn't eat for three full days after that!
It was only afterward I learned to my great surprise that to empty one’s plate in Korea was a sign that the host or hostess couldn’t provide enough to satisfy. In the attempt to be polite by the standards of my culture I was inadvertently offending by the standards of another. This was a great early lesson and helped open my eyes to the vast differences that exist across this world of ours.
A second example is another favorite of mine and I use it often to help visitors better understand Japan. If a small Japanese child misbehaves at home, Mom can be seen to place the child outside the door of the house and close it behind her as she goes back inside. The child will cry, wail, bang on the door, anything to get back in, but to no avail. Passersby on the street recognize this for what it is and ignore the child’s plight. After a time Mom opens the door and accepts the child back into the house with an admonition to behave better in the future. This is one way you train young humans to desire the sense of belonging to a group. The larger lesson is that ejection from the group is a scary thing to be avoided at all costs.
Contrast that with the same scene playing out in the U.S. Had my Mom ever placed me outside the door at such a young age what are the chances I even WANT to go back inside? Not likely!! Look, a butterfly…is that a cat…cool, stink bugs! And just like that I’m wondering the neighborhood like a dog that's slipped his leash. I’m DEFINITELY not banging on the door to go back inside, and if Mom wants me back in the house she's going to have to catch me first! Even at that young age I WANT to do my own thing. This is why punishment for an American kid more likely takes the form of “go to your room!” as freedom of self-expression and self-indulgence is what we naturally associate with the world outside. Certainly the world outside “the group.”
Japan is a small country with little arable land and a large population. It has been all those things for a very long time hence the more visceral need to work together closely as a group. These groupings served them well in the areas of food production, health, and even security, contributing to the long-term success of villages, towns, cities, and eventually, the nation. The population has been trained over a thousand years of history to seek out worthy groups and contribute to shared goals. The result of that long cultural development is the Japan and the Japanese we see today.
In the U.S. we have more land than we know what to do with and inherited a European cultural tendency toward individualism and self-reliance. We praise the brave explorer, the pioneer, the risk taker. We see groups as dangerous and to a certain degree limiting. We even use words like “group think” as a pejorative. In fact the old American parental question “If your friends jumped off a bridge would you follow them?” likely garners a very different—though consistent—answer in Japan. In that country decisions are generally made by consensus and so require that everyone in the group agrees with an action before it’s taken. Therefore if the hypothetical group of friends decided jumping off the bridge was the appropriate way forward, would it not be correct to follow them over the side?
Culture has far more of an impact than any of us likes to admit. We like to think of ourselves as being the product of our own dreams, desires, and aspirations and not the finished product of some factory-like set of rules and norms. The reality is that we are to a great degree shaped by the norms of our society in subtle if relentless ways that we normally don’t even notice. We can realize this only when meeting folks shaped by other norms, likely just as relentless and just as subtle to their notice.
Why does any of this matter? Why, you might ask, should I waste time learning how others think or why they act the way they do? Well, for one thing that knowledge—or at least the earnest pursuit of that knowledge—protects against falling into the traps of racism. The color of one’s skin has no impact whatsoever on their behavior, no matter how much you might want it to be so. Don’t believe it? Hypothetically take four newborns out of a hospital in Bangladesh and raise those children in Iceland. Twenty years later are we more likely to see the first Bangladeshi curling team or the first Icelandic Cricket team? Something to think about.
Our need to classify things—people most of all—by what we can physically see, is an act of intellectual laziness. You know that you can’t be judged by your appearance. That there is more to your book than the cover might indicate. And yet somehow we can’t reliably apply that same standard to others. We still want to classify this race as lazy or that one as impetuous or those guys as drunkards. These can certainly be individual traits, and can easily be passed from parent to child. What they cannot be is imparted through the abundance or lack of pigmentation found in skin cells.
And yet, without being willing to look beyond the obvious differences, without being willing to gauge what really makes another person tick, the mind naturally defaults to the easy answer. They’re different because they look different. This is crazy and doesn’t stand up to the most rudimentary examination, and yet you don’t have to search long to find examples of this brand of thinking. Racism sours our life experiences and has continually stained our history—the story of humanity—a deep crimson red.
I guess what I’m saying—having drawn this out long enough—is that people do things for a reason. The better you understand your “neighbors” on this planet, the more you’ll understand why they do things the way they do. The more time you spend communicating with them—not just yelling at them— the more they’re likely to understand you as well. The greater the understanding, the better the quality of life for all involved.
People make decisions for reasons that seem valid to them, and cultural inputs have great influence over any potential outcome. In a world constantly shrinking through the application of communications technology and global trade, comprehending those inputs, how they relate to a given circumstance or problem, is akin to removing our cultural blinders . . . and opens up a whole new world of understanding.
M. G. Haynes