Culture Shock

Some years ago I used to teach English to business people in Helsinki. One of my lessons was an activity to address Culture Shock. The lesson I gave is quite simple. Participants learn a simple game. When everyone is comfortable with the rules a tournament situation is introduced, where winners move up a table, losers move down. To simulate a cultural barrier, no words are allowed. All communication is by gestures.

What participants are not told is that the rules on different tables are a little different. Needless to say, there is confusion and chaos, but the activity continues until everyone understands the rules are different. Then the tournament stops, and there is a discussion about what happened. How did people feel? How is this experience similar to real life? How did they deal with the situation? Did something change when they realised the rules were not what they were lead to believe?

The Culture Shock, the activity was designed to deal with is typically experienced when we travel. It is then that we usually recognise “rules” are different. However, a difference in rules does not only exist between people of different languages and ethnic groups but also between people, religions, professions, ages, sexes, even personalities. There can also be a difference between yesterday and today. These latter examples are not things we typically viewed as cultural differences, but if we view culture as the sum of a group’s activity, behaviour, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts they surely are.

Today, given the pace of change in society, the rules are changing in virtually every aspect of society. These rules may be of many types, they may be social norms, customs, or laws of science or the land. At this time of change, it is appropriate to consider where we are as a society, as a species? What assumptions have we made in the past, and how have they impacted us and society? Assumptions are critical because they dictate who we become. Or as Mike Wesch wrote: “We create our tools and then our tools create us.” Society is at a moment in history when we have many reasons for reconsidering our world view, how we perceive the world.

Assumption 1: Keep growing the economy, and everything will be just fine.

Economics is a universal language, used by both business and government to formulate and communicate their plans and actions. Unfortunately, its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date, have failed society, and yet still dominate the decision making for the future.

”Keep the economy growing and everything will be just fine” was the view of Arthur Okun, the staff economist for U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who became famous for Okun’s Law, which holds that for every 3-point rise in GDP, unemployment will fall 1 percentage point.

For the past eighty years, the government of almost every country has taken the view that GDP growth should be the major, and sometimes the only consideration in making public decisions. It was believed GDP growth, will increase jobs, income, taxes, and general well being for the whole country. But in today’s globalized world, it’s increasingly apparent that this Nobel-winning metric is too narrow.

Various people have challenged this use of GDP, identifying the weaknesses. In March 1968 Robert F. Kennedy gave an address at the University of Kansas, where he said:

“Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

However, it is only recently that real alternatives have been proposed. Professor of Public Policy Practice, Eric Beinhocker and Entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, among others have been writing and presenting a new approach to economics. (Appendix 2) However, the most comprehensive model I have seen is known as Doughnut Economics developed by Professor Kate Raworth. (Appendix 3).

Professor Kate Raworth saw how profound the effect economics has on all aspects of Earth: the landscape, environment and society. Unsatisfied, with the ambition of endless growth, which has damaged the environment and entrenched inequalities. She has thrown out the textbooks and developed a new model for thriving imbalance.

The model is called Doughnut Economics, because the graphic of two concentric circles used to describe or represent an economy, looks like a doughnut. The inner ring represents the minimum a person needs to lead a good life, as derived from the UN’s sustainable development goals. It includes food, clean water, housing, sanitation, energy, education, healthcare, gender equality, income and political voice. Anyone without such minimum standards is living in the doughnut’s hole.

The doughnut’s outer ring represents the ecological ceiling drawn by earth-system scientists, beyond which humanity damages the climate, soils, oceans, the ozone layer, freshwater and abundant biodiversity.

That area between the two, the doughnut is “where everyone’s needs and that of the planet are being met.” Kate Raworth writes:

“Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend – such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer.”

Assumption 2: My sight enables me to see what is in front of me.

Steven Pinker said “Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.” For most of us, sight is central to our experience of the world. This is reflected in some of the common expressions people use every day. Expressions like

Out of sight, out of mind. – John Heywood.

Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth. – Thomas Fuller

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. – Henri Bergson

It is so convincing that it is difficult to believe the average person’s sight is limited to about 1% of the Electro-Magnetic, EM Spectrum. This 1% is what we refer to as visible light. Other parts of the spectrum we may experience or sense in some way. Infra-red we may recognise as heat. There are also x-rays, radar, radio, which we use in some way through various technologies.

Is it possible that we can see or perceive more of the EM spectrum, but have forgotten how? We know that animals and babies respond to things adults around them are not aware of. Sometimes young children have friends that only they can see, but adults say it is their imagination. What if it is not their imagination, but it is truly there?

In a TED Talk called “Do we see reality as it is?” cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman gives us an excellent metaphor to help us understand this. He says our sight is like an icon on our computer desk-top. It helps us access the information inside the computer. It does not show us what is there but provides us with access to information, a useful experience.

This is not to say we have been cheating or lying to ourselves. But if we open ourselves to the possibility of seeing things a little differently, we open ourselves to greater, unimagined possibilities. There was a time when people believed the world to be flat, learning it is a globe created possibilities. In the same way, we thought the Earth was the unmoving centre of all that is, when we found it revolved around a sun, which moves through the cosmos, we found there is so much more.

In other publications, he suggests with colleagues, understanding the limitation of our sight, is a part of our evolution. He, with colleagues, states: “Indeed, an interface hides the truth; for someone editing a paper or photo, seeing transistors and firmware is an irrelevant hindrance. For the perceptions of Homo sapiens, space-time is the desktop and physical objects are the icons. Our perceptions of space-time and objects have been shaped, without malice aforethought, to hide the truth and guide adaptive behaviours. Perception is an adaptive interface.”