Lesson 5 10/10/17 Cultural Paradigms

I think the idea of cultural paradigms is extremely interesting. You never think something you do is weird of different until you see someone else doing the same thing in a different way. Even then, we often assume that the ways other do things is different, and our way is normal.

While I lived in Bolivia for 18 months, there were many things that I found to be very strange. People always seemed to be running late to things. When you enter a room, you have to greet everyone in the room with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek. Personal space does not exist, especially in public transportation. People are very blunt about their feelings and observations. All things that would be considered strange or even bad in the United States. Some of these things bothered me, even just a little bit, the entire time I was there.

And yet, my first Sunday back in the United States, even though I was assigned to speak in church, I found myself arriving 5 minutes late. At my homecoming party I noticed myself greeting every single person as I entered the room, instead of greeting by families and groups of people. And I felt like the way people talked to me was overly kind and not genuine. I had assimilated into a culture that I had lived in for a long time, and I did not even realize it.

But, coming home, I noticed something very strange. I was able to notice things about American culture that I had not noticed before. I noticed that the people in my southern-Ohio home spoke with a southern twang, although I had never considered myself to be from the South. In my college classes I felt both the students and the teachers to be rather condescending, always trying to argue some kind of moot point. But here is the crazier thing: the things I found to be strange in my culture bothered me more than the things that I found to be strange in another. There was something far more personally offensive about it to me.

We really do not know that much about our culture until we experience another. And in every culture, there are good things and bad, depending on your point of view. There are parts of culture that we are proud of, and other parts that we try to ignore.

I think conversation is key. Especially when we are in a classroom with a diversity of cultures, or we encounter someone who is from a culture that we are not familiar with. It is easy to become offended when people do things that you are not used to, even if it is not their intention. Talking about our differences and learning from one another can create a new culture of respect and understanding.