Oh,
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till
Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But
there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When
two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of
the earth!
As
a youth, I often heard the first two lines of this poem.
Only later did I discover that the next two lines of Rudyard
Kipling’s "The Ballad of East and West" firmly declared
that cultural differences between East and West could be surmounted.
Recently
I went to the World Wide Web with a question:
Is the Internet of any use at helping people to understand
different cultures?
The
problems that cultural differences seem to pose are increasing at an
enormous rate. The Western and the Chinese idea of human rights have a vast
gap between them. It's
apparent, following the World Trade Center disaster that many Americans don't
understand Arabs.
When
it comes to understanding other cultures, seasoned travelers and
expatriates have a distinct advantage over those who have never left
their home countries. Those who have learned another language and befriended
natives of other cultures fare even better.
As
an expatriate of many years, I'm often reminded of how provincial unraveled
people anywhere can be, especially when they have little or no contact
with people of other cultures. For
those who have contact with only a few from other cultures, it's easy
to form stereotypes.
My
last comment came close to a stereotype since not all unraveled people
are provincial in their thinking.
I found the following bit of humor on the Web which illustrates
stereotypes:
Americans:
Spend most of their lives glued to the idiot box.
Canadians:
Don't, but only because they can't get more American channels.
Brits:
Pay a tax just so they can watch four channels.
Aussies:
Export all their crappy programs, which no-one there watches, to
Britain, where everybody loves them.
The
need to avoid stereotyping no longer requires expensive travel to
distant lands. It's now possible to find out about other people, their
customs, patterns of behavior and guiding principles from the
Internet.
One
way to do this is to go directly to country sites, which often include
cultural information links. Another is to identify a particular
culture, like "Arab culture" and type that into a search
engine.
Starting
my search, I typed, "understanding cultural differences"
into Google, my favorite
search engine. The first
item that appeared was a 1998 academic paper by four scholars from Finland.
Their definition of culture can help to guide ours:
"a framework to our lives, something which affects our
values, attitudes and behavior”"
The
second item in the Google search was also academic.
Though it aims to help teachers who deal with immigrant
students to understand how their cultural differences affect their
learning, it has a message for all.
Thinking
about cultural differences and the academic world, I recalled an
embarrassing incident at the University of Kuwait a number of years
ago. An American
colleague who hadn't made an effort to explore local customs sat at
his newly assigned desk in a large office shared by many.
After
a few minutes, he sat back and lifted his legs atop the desk, with the
soles of his shoes facing the office door.
As his Arab colleagues entered, seeing the soles of his shoes,
they hesitated until they overcame the moment of shock, realizing that
the American gesture resulted from cultural ignorance and wasn't
intended as an insult.
The
third item I located focused on the cultural differences affecting
managerial leadership in the
workplace. It started
by asking the question, "Does the definition of effective
leadership differ depending on culture"?
They conclude, "Effective leadership, then, may not be so
different, depending on whether you are leading in Pittsburgh
(Pennsylvania, USA) or Paris (France)”"
Another
business-oriented article by Carolyn
Luesing points out that "Appreciating Cultural Differences
Makes Good Sense." She
asks, "What do you do when a new Japanese business associate
hands you his card? Why
should you never send carnations to a German? What is the most common
way to greet a Latin"?
These
are typical of the kinds of cultural differences that worldwide travelers
and business people who entertain visitors from other cultures need to
know about. As Ms. Luesing notes, "By making an effort to close the
culture gap, you'll gain respect, increase credibility and foster
healthy business relationships”"
Learning
other languages has greater value than developing the ability to
communicate mere words to others.
I've always admired the Dutch who typically learn three or four
languages, a practice that makes it easy for them to get along well
with people from other cultures.
Those
who think that language habits don't make a difference in cultural
understanding should read some of the books by Edward T. Hall.
Unfortunately Hall’s books are not available online due to copyright
restrictions. All of his
works deal with the importance, from different angles, of cultural
differences and problems of communication.
Hall's
works include The Silent Language, The Hidden Dimension,
The Dance of Life, Beyond Culture and Understanding
Cultural Differences,
which is also advertised on the Web.
As
the Web page points out, the book is "designed to help Americans,
Germans and the French better understand one another’s psychology
and behavior”" In
his first book, Professor Hall wisely observed "culture controls behavior
in deep and persisting ways, many of which are outside of awareness
and therefore beyond conscious control of the individual”"
For
example, in English we "walk in the rain"; but in
Arabic we "walk under the rain”"
I'm convinced that Arabic speakers and English speakers
experience the rain differently. This was the sort of conclusion that the
anthropologist/linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf drew after living with the
Hopi Indians for four years.
I'm
also convinced that Arabs who speak of al beit hamer (the house
red) see things differently from the Englishman who talks of "the
red house". One person thinks of the object and then the color; the other
sees the color and then the object.
Arabs
writing from right to left must also think differently when they're
writing in Arabic than when they're writing in English.
If this seems exaggerated, think about how directional our
thinking is when crossing a street in a country where people drive on
the right from countries where they drive on the left.
In
Bahrain or America, I look automatically to the left first before
crossing a street. When I
travel to the UK or Japan, I must think about which direction I need
to look toward or risk getting run over.
The
differences in customs can also prove to be interesting studies in
understanding others. As
a youth, I was fascinated by the difference between a Polish wedding I
attended and the typical American weddings I'd been to.
The Arabic custom of separate men's and women's functions
offers an excellent example of a distinctly different cultural
tradition from Western practice.
A
Web site exploring wedding
customs focuses on "the most beautiful ways from around the
world to show your love and celebrate your union”"
Professor
Gregorio Billikopf Encina of the University of California noted,
"Often, observations on cultural differences are based on our own
weakness and reflect our inability to connect with that
culture”"
"Getting
Through Customs" heads a fascinating Web
page by the authors of Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands:
How to Do Business in Sixty Countries .
In addition to almost 20 interesting articles on the important
role cultural differences play in the global marketplace, the Web site
has 50 tests of your cultural IQ with ten questions each.
The
HSBC bank made a particularly cogent observation in one of their ads:
"People who want to know a lot about the differences in cultures
study anthropology. Those who want to know about the cultural differences in
particular countries surf the Internet."
E.M.
Forster's novel A Passage to India focused artistically on the
cultural differences that separate people and the attitudes that make
overcoming those differences difficult. In another of his novels, Howard’s
End, Forster's character offers some excellent advice to
overcome cultural differences: "Only connect"!
