Cultural Intelligence by Lawrence
Andrew Nagorski in his book, The Greatest Battle (2007), reported
that Winston Churchill said to his personal secretary before Operation
Barbarossa, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable
reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” With neo-liberal globalisation
and mass culture by “Hollywood” I feel obliged to make a favourable reference
to behaviourism in the context of Cultural Intelligence.
But first, Cultural Intelligence (cultural quotient) is an academic
discipline and the remit is to study how people from different cultures
interact with each other and how successful their endeavours can be. An element
of the discipline includes an IQ style assessment of candidates. The discipline
is used by governments, including the military, and in business and education
in their global operations. Indeed, many of us have worked and lived in a
number of different “cultures” but everyone today has been exposed to different
cultures. So cultural intelligence is not only a modern subject but we all have
to have a high score in cultural intelligence.
The scope of our subject must surely focus on the “intelligence”
part. One of my reasons for suggesting this is that we might easily be confused
or even downright wrong about our culture never mind other cultures. Cultural
intelligence is also directly linked to epistemology and the philosophy of
action, epistemology because we need to learn about and understand other
cultures and philosophy of action because we also need to act on cue.
Culture can mean a lot of things to different people. At first
glance we would associate culture with a number of activities: art, literature,
festivals, music, dance, food and customs. The key here is that the activity
must have a linage (pedigree) and a history. This does not mean that there are
no modern day activities that cannot be considered as culture; for example these
past 15 years or so the gig economy has made it easy for people to create an
activity that becomes a recognised event over the years.
Beyond the obvious we can also delve deeper into the culture of
politics, regionalism, social cohesion, family norms, religion, language, doing
business and two elements that one wouldn’t associate with culture: beliefs and
attitudes. Under attitudes, I would include table manners, etiquette and
politeness. We might even include attitudes and belief in a working
environment: for example some cultures involve the belief that people should
stay late into the evening at the office to show commitment to the company. In
other cultures staying late is not only seen as a sign of inefficiency, but
more importantly an embarrassment to colleagues who might feel obliged to stay
late as well.
In other words, there is more to culture than just what we see in
tourist brochures and certainly more than just saying please and thank you.
This makes the whole issue of learning about other cultures very complex and a
time consuming process activity. I am, therefore, very sceptical about the
ability to teach about cultures apart from living in the target culture for a
long period of time. On the other hand today we live in a global environment
were a new universal culture is developing over and about the tradition
cultures: we might call this the hamburger and fries culture. Maybe the
ultimate test to show our understanding of other cultures would be to
understand local humour, never mind the peculiarities of sense of humour. And
knowing when and the type of humour to employ are probably even more difficult
and thus a better test.
And it is not enough to know the language; although language has its
own culture set (set as in set theory) cultures and language tend to be
influenced by local conditions. This makes the process of learning the culture
of a place even more demanding. For example, it is very common in mountainous regions
to have two villages on opposite sides of the valley each speaking a different
dialects; an example this is very common in The Emilia-Romagna Apennine
Mountains.
One of the biggest challenges of cultural intelligence is the need
for this intelligence in different contexts: are we curious about some other
culture from the comfort of home, holidaying in another cultures, settling in
another country and of course receiving people from other cultures. As we know
immigration and moving to other cultures can have serious consequences,
especially tensions can arise that can lead to disquiet, or worse including
racism and xenophobia from the host people of a country and victimhood of incoming
immigrants.
As I have said the first issue about cultural intelligence is
intelligence: specifically are we prepared for our endeavour into the wide
world and survive the cultural shock? The first challenge is to distinguish
between culture and simply being exploited. Very few places in the world write
menus very well in different languages. This is when knowing the local language
can be helpful, a menu in a different language can be like blood to sharks, it’s
lunch time for predators. Languages, and especially words, do not travel well
but lack of self awareness (what are you doing in your surroundings) can create
more serious problems. In effect, shouting in our own language won’t make
others understand us better; it only demonstrates to others that our Flintstone
genes are still alive and kicking in our blood.
But cultural intelligence starts at home, forget the culture by
Hollywood we are exposed to everyday and the pretty pictures on social media. Reality
is different, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, but
curiosity can be a good master of positive experiences. But being responsible has
nothing to do with cultural intelligence; this is more about our character.
However, it is a pity that many people, and all of us are guilty of
this at sometime or other, are too preoccupied with our prejudices and false
ideas that we invite others to dislike us from the get go. Clothes are
certainly one of the more sensitive issues in cultures. You might be right that
maybe the clothes of other cultures are downright awful and oppressive, but
sitting season after season of catwalk fashion shows will teach you a thing or
two of awfulness. No one is perfect but may people are poor, tolerance can get
us a long way. In other words there are as many cultures as there are groups of
people. And, of course, in some respects, your culture in certain things might
be better, and in others not so good.
I started by saying that cultural intelligence involves epistemology
and philosophy of action. Whether we like it or not, other cultures force us to
learn new things and sometimes we have to learn these new things otherwise we
might end up in trouble. If the jungle chief tells you to eat the worm as a
sign of friendship you can eat the worm or if you don’t like worms do not
travel to places where they eat worms. Other cultures sometimes force us to do
things that we might not like.
And only from knowing as much as possible about our target culture
can we interact with the people in that culture. We can say that we are well
educated in cultural intelligence when we know what to do (epistemology) and
when to act (philosophy of action).
I promised you a favourable reference to behaviourism: be nice, keep
your mouth shut, observe with a purpose and avoid being a moron.
Best Lawrence
Cultural Intelligence by Rafael Carvajal
Cultural Intelligence by ruelfpepa
Cultural Intelligence by Lawrence
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