I protest.

Cultural differences and human similarities.

Conrad over at The Gweilo Diaries takes serious issue with an assertion of mine in his post Cultural Differences. The assertion he has a problem with is this one:

He calls this "balderdash" and bases this opinion upon his experience of living "among people whose skin color, nationality, language, accent and/or religion were different from my own." He claims that there is something "fundimentally [sic] different" about the inhabitants of Saigon and Lagos (Nigeria, I assume, since I don't think he was referring to Portugal). He then asks: Finally, he indirectly accuses me of believing in the Jeffersonian ideal of equality and of being "frightfully misinformed about the way the world really is."

Well, hell. I really didn't expect that kind of response (hell, I didn't expect someone as conservative as Conrad to even read my blog). Since he has made all of these assertions, though, I guess I'll respond.

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm a software engineer living in a beach city that is a suburb of Los Angeles. I've lived here for some fifteen years, having moved here from Texas. In school I took a minor in psychology and it has been a major interest of mine ever since. Finally, while I've never lived overseas as Conrad does, I have been to China a couple of times and am in fact married to a woman from HangZhou. No, I'm not an expert, but I'm hardly uninformed, either.

Sure, there are differences between cultures. There are even differences between individuals within cultures. Culture, though, is a thin veneer that provides the rules of behavior within a society. Certainly those rules can seem very surprising to a member of another culture, and sometimes the rules are very hard to understand when one is accustomed to unconscious adherence to a quite different set of rules. I know this very well indeed, since I've had to understand a lot about my wife's native culture in order to understand some of her behaviors and the reasons for them. Culture, however, is learned. There are many, many things about being human that are not learned, and it is to those I was referring when I said "they are just like you are."

What are some of those unlearned behaviors? Well, a set of behaviors that spring immediately to mind are those surrounding human gregariousness. All human cultures have some form of family. While not all may reflect the so-called "nuclear family" of the West (one man, one woman, children), they all have some social grouping that is recognizable as a "family" to virtually all other cultures. The fact that there are, in fact, rules for social behavior makes us alike, as well. Not the rules themselves, they can vary widely, but the fact that there are rules. As it happens, some of the rules are more or less the same across cultures. Respect of elders, some hierarchy of authority, specific gender roles and others. Details may vary, but the fact that there are rules is a constant.

Another constant across cultures is the desire for and valuation of children. Not in general of course, many cultures (such as my own) tend to devalue children in the mass, but in individual cases this is not true. Individuals may vary, but in general healthy people want and value their own children. This is as true among the Zulu as it is in Manhattan, as true in Tokyo as it is in London. The outpouring of support for that poor Iraqi boy who lost almost his entire family and both of his arms cut across cultures because the report made an individual out of that child, which appealed to the potential parent in all most of us.

Then there are all of the basic human needs. Food, shelter, clothing, health, sleep, sex. Conrad should be able to relate to the last, right enough. The very fact that he is successful in his forays into the nightlife of various Asian cities reflects the fact that his sexual desires are shared by those whose cultures are different than his. Besides sex, though, we all need enough to eat, somewhere safe to sleep and someplace to keep the rain, snow or sun off. We all need our health, as well, so we can continue to meet those other needs.

This leads to Abraham Maslow's needs hierarchy. This is one of the bases of modern psychology and one of the first things one learns when studying the science. Maslow outlined a hierarchy of human needs ranging from the strictly physical to psychological needs such as self-respect and the respect of others. While I don't entirely agree that all of Maslow's needs are common across all cultures, many of those needs certainly are universal. Being part of a community, being respected, being safe, all are as true in Africa as they are in Europe, as common in Hong Kong as they are in Sao Paulo.

It is easy to look at somone and only see the superficial, the surface. There has been and continues to be a lot of tragic misunderstanding due to simple differences of culture. Looking past culture can be difficult, sometimes extraordinarily difficult. For myself, remembering that my wife is often motivated strongly by "face," the set of rules in her culture that govern social standing, is one of the more difficult. "Face" is a concept that is quite foreign to those of us who have grown up in a Western culture. Fortunately for the future of my marriage, though, it is possible for me to learn that concept and, if necessary, follow it, since it is relatively superficial. It is merely one of the rules of her culture. When it comes to being human, however, there is no difference at all.

Why did Saudis fly the planes into those buildings and not Swedes? Not because Saudis are different from Swedes, but because the circumstances of the Saudis, the culture they were a part of, led to it. In similar conditions, the Swedes might very well do similar things. Why do Chinese children fill the best universities in the US while Mexican children do not? Because Chinese cultural values lead to the very strong desire, even obsession, to succeed in school, whereas Mexican cultural values do not. I might add that the American culture isn't too great about that, either. Despite our children being a part of American culture, though, my wife and I plan to inculcate in them some of the Chinese values. If Mexican culture were such that it shared the Chinese value of hard work in academic pursuits, the Mexican children would do as well as the Chinese. It's not the people, it's the culture. It's not that people are different, it's that the rules by which they live vary.

Conrad, you mistake superficial cultural differences for essential differences between people. You're right, cultures are different, but that doesn't mean that the people themselves are also different. The people are the same, and if you can look past the culture you can see that. In my (admittedly limited) experience, what has amazed me has not been the differences, although those have been obvious enough. It has, instead, been the similarities that have left me shaking my head in awe at just how alike human beings are, at just how much we all have in common with one another.

So I stick by my assertion that those people from different countries, from different cultures, with odd accents and skin color, are indeed just like we are. I think I have all the proof I need that this is true. And, therefore, there is no need to be afraid of them, which was my point in the first place.

UPDATE (May 7, 14:55 PDT): I fixed up the paragraph about Maslow's Needs Hierarchy. This thing is getting enough attention that leaving it like it was was getting a little embarassing. Thanks for all the kind words from you folks, by the way.

Posted by Frank at May 6, 2003 8:12 PM