This quote is a bit long, but addresses the question of whether we are (culturally) more similar or more different:
"Just like computers, we are all programmed. … humans have a ‘cultural programming’ they can’t operate without but that operates largely outside of awareness.
How important is our cultural programming?
Macintosh or Windows operating systems look similar at first glance. Both have monitors you look at, with a ‘desktop’ holding a few icons. Both use a mouse and keyboard for input devices. Both have cords and wires coming out the back of a plastic central box that is the core of the computer. Both use printers. Both accomplish the same tasks. You could argue that the two systems are basically the same, with the same ‘look and feel.’
In some ways, Mac and Windows systems can communicate well enough with each other, too. When I send e-mails from my Mac, I don’t have to be concerned about whether the recipients have Mac or Windows computers. They can use whatever system they want to open the e-mail at their end.
But try putting a Mac program into a Windows computer and you’ll get an error message, because at the programming level the operating systems are significantly different.
This analogy applies to humans. A lot of participants in my cross-cultural programs seem to think that people all around the world are basically the same, and at first glance we do indeed seem similar. For example, people basically look the same (we are all human), have the same concerns (health, safety, food shelter, etc.), and experience the same emotions (love, anger, fear, hatred, etc.). And, like computers, we are usually able to communicate, at least on the surface, across cultures. We send letters, faxes, and e-mails; we talk on the phone and sometimes communicate face to face.
But at a deeper level, people around the world do have significantly different cultural programming, just like computers do at the operating system level. Try to run an American-style business meeting (Americans will want to get straight to business, use people’s first names as though they’ve been friends for years, dress and speak informally, move quickly, take risks, etc.) with European partners (some Europeans may want to get to know one another a bit before talking ‘money,’ perhaps feel more comfortable using titles and last names or at least more polite ways of addressing one another, dress stylishly, move cautiously to avoid risks, even be given more historical grounding) and you’ll see that not everyone has the same ‘operating system.’
There are differences within cities, where each neighborhood can have its own feel, and growing up on the ‘other side of the tracks’ within a city can mean growing up in a totally different world.
If this is true, it must follow that daily life in Paris is probably not exactly like daily life in Calcutta. A resident of Calcutta is culturally programmed quite differently from a Parisian. At the surface level, it’s easy to see: East Indians and the French dress differently because they live in areas of different weather patterns; they eat different food, use different transportation, enjoy different leisure activities, and so forth.
Deeper down, they may define family or marriage differently, may have divergent religious beliefs, and may not share similar knowledge and opinions on a variety of topics.
Deeper still, they may have different core values: friendship, convictions that are very strongly held and may not change as long as they live (e.g., humility, face, self-reliance), and so forth. At even deeper cultural programming levels, they probably have what amounts to quite different worldviews. They may view time as abundant or scarce or assume that a god is in charge of their fate or that they determine their own destiny."
Brooks Peterson, Cultural Intelligence
