Culture quote of the day: others are not failed attempts at being me (Wade Davis)

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being YOU: they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.” – Wade Davis (emphasis added) (I credit my daughter with bringing this quote to my attention)

This quote captures something of the difference between an ethnocentric and an ethnorelative / global minset, in how we look at others.

When we are ethnocentric, i.e., centered in our own people (our own ethne), we are unaware that there are different ways of being human (as represented, for example, in the variations between being “individualist” vs. “collectivist” when it comes to how individuals are seen in relation to the group, being “monochronic” vs. “polychronic” when it comes to how we view and experience time and tasks, variations in group norms and customs, worldview, etc. – all the ways in which cultures differ). We lack both “self-awareness” and “other-awareness,” relate to others as if they were us, and inevitably judge them for ways they fall short (i.e., they don’t do things or see things rightly). We see them as “failed attempts at being me.”

Back to a Myers-Briggs example, as a strong “thinker” on the MBTI, for a long time I was frustrated with people who let feelings “get in the way” in a discussion (rather than “simply” focusing on “facts” or “truth”). It disturbed me when in a discussion, someone would become emotional or get their feelings hurt. Then I learned of the “thinker”/”feeler” distinction in MBTI terms, that these are two basically different ways (on a spectrum, of course, with a range of variation) of processing information and interacting with others, in terms of the way feelings are (or are not) involved. Becoming aware of this, I was able to begin to appreciate that different others were, well, different than me (and not to be measured against my way of experiencing life, but to be appreciated as the unique humans they are).

As we get to know different others as different (in any of the ways that they are different, and this works on an interpersonal as well as on an intercultural level) but equally human, we come to know ourselves more deeply as well, and we have a more multifaceted understanding of the reality that there are a range of unique manifestations of the human spirit. We see ourselves, our ways of being human, in the context of other ways of being human. This is what it means to have an ethnorelative (or global) mindset – we see our people (our ethnos) in the context of the spectrum of kalaidescope of peoples.

Culture quote: Self-knowledge on the boundary

“Who knows one culture, knows no culture. We come to self knowledge on the boundary” – David Augsburger

In IDC terms, the two major ways we have of relating to others / other cultures are from an “ethnocentric” stance, and from a “global” or “ethnorelative” stance. Knowing one culture, in the Augsburger quote, is being ethnocentric – I know the world as I know it (as my people know it), and don’t realize that there are other ways of seeing things. On an individual level, it is equivalent to just knowing how I experience the world – for example, being an “extrovert” but not realizing that that is one way of being, that there are other people who are “introverts.”

Stephen Covey says that without self-awareness it is impossible to know other people as they are, because I relate to others as if they were me. Therefore, self-awareness and other-awareness, or realizing that there are different ways of being human, go hand in hand. To refer to the extrovert / introvert example, if I am an extrovert but unaware of the existence / reality of introverts, I may simply judge others who are introverts as being rude or unfriendly (by my standards, which are the only ones I possess). The knowledge that others are different, that there are other ways of being, comes “on the boundary” (of otherness), as Augsburger says – and once I come to understand that introvertedness is another way of being, I can know both myself and others more deeply.

The same is true of knowledge of other cultures / people in their cultural context. According to the IDC, Minimization is a transitional phase between “ethnocentrism” and a “global mindset.” One of the keys to growing out of ethnocentrism (through Minimization and into Acceptance and Adaptation) is a combination of self-knowledge and other-knowledge, which comes “on the boundary” between myself / my group and others, as I learn that there are different ways of being human – that some peoples, for example, see themselves not as free-standing individuals, but as part of a group, with the group having the right to speak into the lives of individuals and guide decisions, etc. (e.g., who they marry, where they live, etc. - this is known by interculturalists as a “collectivist” way of living out the relationship between individuals and their group).

The only way to gain awareness of my own culture (and of the fact that I am an encultured human being) is to go to the boundaries of others, and encounter them.  So if you are looking for growing self-awareness, step out. Or, to look at things from a different angle, if you travel and engage others in their cultural settings, realize that the “strangeness” you run into is not an indication that those others need to “get their act together” (i.e., become more like you, in how they drive or organize their society or approach time and appointments, etc.), but rather that you have encountered a different way of being human; and this represents a great opportunity to learn not just about those “strange” others, but about yourself as well.