As long as you live in your home country, you can get along very well without being conscious of your own culture.You automatically do things in a certain way, and it just works.
When you go into another cultural setting, it doesn’t work so well. You suddenly discover that you have unconsciously brought a lot of cultural baggage with you, and it is causing trouble. You get angry with people because they do not measure up to expectations you didn’t even know you had. You get laughed at or avoided for doing things your way.
It is helpful to open your eyes to your own culture. Then you can deal with it in a conscious way, choosing when to act your normal way and when not to.
For example, success implies in some cultures setting goals, working hard for change, and using personal achievements as the basis for one’s self-worth.
Some other cultures center their values on social harmony, defense of a community, maintenance of the status quo, or even transcendence of personal existence.
As an American, I am used to pressing for success and change, but other cultures can see that as insensitive, pushy and disruptive. Some Westerners would regard people with that mindset as stubborn, lazy or unconcerned with improving their lives.
What is important is realizing that the cultures simply disagree about whether life should center on individual success or not. There is value in both viewpoints. Our challenge is to recognize and value other viewpoints even while we consciously decide on our own.
Well known American Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, developed a hierarchy of needs, teaching that self-actualization (fully becoming the person you could become) is the highest level of human development. Therefore it is not surprising that whatever promotes self-esteem is good in our culture, and whatever diminishes it is bad.
In less individualistic cultures, self-esteem does not rest nearly so heavily on individual achievement. The important thing is one’s relationship with extended family, the village, or the clan. What the larger group thinks of me is far more important than what I think of myself.
This is one reason people in other cultures spend so much time consulting everyone before they take action. They are making sure they don’t damage their group-esteem, because of its value in their life. When we do not consult others we risk coming off as arrogant and self-centered.
They might reject a proposed change, no matter how ‘beneficial,’ if it is introduced by bypassing the normal pattern of consulting relationships. The merits of an idea might not matter as much to them as the way the idea is introduced.
Conflict about fun is much less common than conflict about many other cultural values and behaviors. However, one major mistake we often make as foreigners is spending most or all of our ‘fun’ time with people of our own culture rather than with local people.
Having fun with local people may seem too much like work, or it may depend too heavily on the use of a local language. Nevertheless, having fun together can be one of the best bridges between cultures. So how can you get involved in some local fun this month?
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