How Diverse Cultures Correlate with Basic Assumptions

We have begun to explore how diverse cultures (including as they change over time) correlate with our basic assumptions regarding selfhood and human nature (beginning with more individual vis-à-vis more relational) and thereby our likely initial attitudes toward “privacy.” In the next chapter, we will expand on these correlations regarding our basic assumptions about property (as a start, whether more individual-exclusive vis-à-vis more relational-inclusive). At the same time, I have emphasized that we should always keep in mind that “culture” and such cultural characterizations are to be treated as heuristics – initial rules of thumb that are useful, indeed essential, for how we first encounter and interpret the behaviors, choices, actions, etc., of those from cultural backgrounds different from our own. They are not to be treated, that is, as some sort of “essentialist” or deterministic generalization that categorizes all members of a given “culture” wholesale within the same box.

It will then be helpful to reflect more carefully on what you think “culture” may be, and how your own background culture shapes your own basic assumptions, behaviors, etc. – and how it may not: perhaps you’re an exception to the generalizations – perhaps because you have consciously reflected on and rejected one or more aspects of your background culture?

For example, many people in my class and generation grew up within the strongly racist environments of the 1950s–60s United States. But many of us also consciously chose to reject racism as best we could, in the name of basic democratic norms and values such as equality and respect. More broadly, especially those of us privileged to travel and study abroad often find that these experiences give us a new perspective on our “culture of origin” – and while we may embrace certain aspects of our home culture all the more warmly as a result, we may also seek to reduce or eliminate one or more elements of that culture. In my case, the Scandinavian countries, while by no means perfect on this point, enjoy the highest levels of equality and gender equality in the developed world. Living and experiencing with what this means in everyday practices and attitudes – for example, a much higher proportion of women in politics and other forms of cultural leadership, as well as in everyday workplace roles, from bus driver to police woman – starkly contrasts with the more hierarchical cultures of the US. Experiencing such equality as an everyday reality thus helps fuel my efforts to reject various norms and practices of gender inequality as part of my background culture.