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.

Culture Quote of the Day - don't assume, don't project

"The first step toward becoming more culturally intelligent is to become more aware of our own cultural identity.... We have a universal tendency to think that other people do things for the same reasons we do them. After all, we learned to do what we do by observing others around us. But as we become more aware of our own culture and its values, we're less likely to project our values onto the Other. Understanding our own culture protects us from assuming the actions of the Other mean the same thing as when we act that way."

David Livermore, Cultural Intelligence

Culture Quote of the Day - self-awareness

"The inward, transformative journey of cultural intelligence involves a heightened understanding of our own cultural background. In what ways are we shaped by the cultures of which we're a part? How does our cultural background shape the way we think, see, and love? ... This kind of understanding about our own cultural background...plays a significant role in helping us move forward in the journey of cultural intelligence."

David Livermore, Cultural Intelligence

Culture Quote of the Day

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

Again, the key to growth from ethnocentrism to a positive, sensitive experience of cultural difference, is becoming culturally self-aware. It is in self-awareness that we come to know others as they are. 

Embracing Life in the Cultural Margins

It is a well-known saying among Anthropologists, that the “journey to the other” (i.e., spending time living in another culture, coming to understand that people, culture, worldview) ends with you returning to yourself, changed, and knowing yourself in a new way.

Another way you might put this, is that the journey among others can, if we are open to learning and changing, be a journey from our original state of ethnocentrism (seeing the world from our peoples’ point of view, and assuming that the way we see things is simply the way things are) to ethnorelativism (or ethnosensitivity), realizing that there are different ways of seeing the world, different ways, you might say, of being human, different cultural practices, etc. – and that my culture and worldview and people are simply one among many.

In one respect, a key dimension of this journey is a growth in cultural self-awareness, becoming self-reflective and aware of the fact that I do in fact have a culture and a worldview, and that they filter and shape what I see and how I see the world. As Milton Bennett points out in his Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (see his article, “Growing in Intercultural Competence”), and as Stephen Covey points out on an individual level in his 7 Habits, self-awareness is key for understanding and relating to others – without knowing ourselves, we cannot truly know others, for we treat them as if they were us.

Another dimension of this journey, as pointed out by Bennett in the DMIS, is that it is a journey toward life on the cultural margins. The longer we live among the different others, the more we change; and when we return to our own people, culture, place, we now to a certain extent have an “outsider’s” perspective – our difference causes us to see our own people from a different perspective.

In my experience, 27 years of living to a large degree among Arab Muslims, has caused me to have a sense of living in the “cracks,” on the margins, between cultures. Though I can “fit in” with Arab Muslims, can adapt to their cultural settings, both they and I know that I am not an Arab Muslim. I have not assimilated; I have not lost my own cultural identity (and note that Bennett’s model is about adaptation, an expansion of one’s cultural repertoire, not about assimilation, exchanging one culture for another). But when I return to the U.S., in general, or to Minnesota, in particular (my original people), I have a sense that I am no longer “at home” there, either – the way I see Islam and Muslims, the Palestinian situation, U.S. foreign policy, Christianity and being Christian, the relationship of faith and culture (including politics), and much more, have changed.

And so I find myself becoming something of a “third culture adult” (“third culture kid” is a way of referring to children who are raised in a cultural setting different than that of their parents, so that they are dealing with multiple cultures and cultural identities; there is a growing body of literature about the experience of TCKs), comfortable to some degree almost anywhere, but not totally “at home” anywhere. And I find myself being something of an “ambassador-at-large,” explaining Americans and Christians to my Arab Muslim friends, and explaining Arabs and Muslims to my American and Christian friends, trying to bridge the gaps of understanding, culture and worldview that keep people apart, and that seem in these days to be widening.

Bennett, in his final stage of an ethnorelative experience of cultural difference, “Integration,” talks about two possible experiences of that stage of being bi- or multi-cultural. One can have a negative sense of life on the cultural margins, which he calls “encapsulated” marginality, where “the separation from culture is experienced as alienation,” and a positive sense, which he calls “constructive” marginality, in which “movements in and out of cultures are a necessary and positive part of one’s identity.” In “encapsulated” marginality, I feel a sense of crisis of identity, not knowing where I belong, where I fit, where my “home” is; in “constructive” marginality, I grow to have a sense of myself as a person who (as I said above) can be comfortable to some degree, almost anywhere, even if I’m not totally at home.

I have experienced some of both. There are times when I long for the “good old days,” when I knew where I was from, and was easily at home there. But then, that’s not me any more, and I have come to appreciate the ability to see things from the perspective of different people, to empathize, to not be afraid of the unknown, but to have a sense that the unknown can become known, if I’m willing to step out and cross boundaries. And I’ve become convinced that our world needs people who are willing to take down rather than put up walls, who are able to find common ground rather than push others away; and I enjoy visiting different places and talking with different people, finding human life and values that I can embrace and appreciate and be enriched by.

And so, though I do not have the privilege of being a TCK (but I have had a small part in raising four of them), I now consider myself a TCA, and look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead, of travel and crossing boundaries and growing in understanding different others, and helping people come to know and understand and respect each other.

Culture Quote of the Day

“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)

I love this quote. My daughter gave me a poster of it, which I have up in my house:

Why do I love it? Or perhaps more to the point, what does it mean to me?

I guess I like it because it highlights a central trap or pitfall of our natural ethnocentrism - the tendency to see everything (and everyone) from our (cultural) point of view, and then to measure everyone else against that point of view, and find them lacking, less than human (i.e., less than me, than us).

Steven Covey, in his 7 Habits, points out that self-awareness is the key human gift that unlocks all the other unique human gifts. He makes the point that until I gain self-awareness, I treat others as if they were me. The obvious problem with this is, others are not me, and treating them as if they were me does not lead to positive or healthy relationships.

The same is true on the cultural level. Until we gain cultural self-awareness, including awareness that our perception of the world is not the same as the reality of the world, but rather, a model of that reality; and that other peoples, looking at things from a different vantage point, have different perceptions and different models; and that there is much for us to learn from those other perceptions and models - i.e., until we learn that others are different from us, but still human, and that there is a beauty in the difference - we will not relate well to those different others. And we will find ourselves mired in the kinds of intergroup tensions and problems that are manifesting themselves around us on a daily basis.

Can People of Faith Rise Above Tribalism? Reflections on the occasion of the remembrance of 9/11

(I meant to post this on 9/11, but my computer crashed, and I only now regained access to my documents.)

In another post on the site “Not the Religious Type,” the author refers to a recent NY Times editorial by Stanley Fish (see http://notreligious.typepad.com/notreligious/2010/09/their-kooks-are-representative-our-kooks-are-lone-nuts.html#more and http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/weve-seen-this-movie-before/?pagemode=print). In his editorial, Fish points out the double standard used to discuss violent acts by or against members of a religious community, and concludes the following:

“The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.”

What is going on here, I think, is something which we humans easily and naturally slip into, a kind of tribalism whereby we assume the best of those who are part of our people, and read their actions in light of our own best values (and with a generous dose of excusing and explaining away bad behavior), but assume the worst of those who are part of a different group, especially during times of conflict and tension between the communities.

(In terms of a model developed by Bennett – his “Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity” – which explains how people progress in their experience of cultural difference, this would fall into the second phase, “Defense,” in which people have a negative experience of difference, and tend to generalize and polarize and talk in “us”/“them” terms, where the “us” is generalized positively and the “them” is generalized negatively. More on the DMIS another time.)

The ability to assume the best of our people and the worst of others is rooted, I think, in lack of self-awareness in the first instance (glossing over how bad “we” are and can be) and ignorance of the others in the second instance. When we don’t know people from the “different” group, it is easy to assume the worst of them.

As a Christian, I believe that Jesus would encourage us to be bigger than our tribal allegiances. (As a human being, I would hope that any religious faith would encourage those who follow it, in this same direction.) In illustration of his most important teaching, that the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves, he told a parable of a despised Samaritan (whom his Jewish listeners would have nothing to do with, and through whose territory they would not even pass) helping a wounded Jew who was abandoned by the road side. And he himself not only passed through Samaria, he stopped and conversed with a Samaritan woman, someone who would have been looked at by Jewish men as a non-person. By his teachings and by his example, Jesus showed us that God’s perspective on humanity is different than the tribalism we so easily embrace.

My question is, can we – not just Christians, but people of any faith – rise above our tribalism (which is worse when wrapped up with religion – which happens with people of all religions) and learn to relate to other human beings who are not members of our tribe, as if they were people also created in the image of God? And can we defuse the generalizing and polarizing, and work toward a more accurate understanding of those of other groups, that can only come as we enter into relationship with those others?