Cultural Difference

While it’s normative to note the realities of cultural difference early in a mission experience, whether short or long-term, I find that after nearly 3 years in South America I still think about cultural difference. It’s a reality that’s embedded in our daily lives. From buying groceries to meeting people on the street while walking the dog, I encounter and live cultural difference daily.

I’ve experienced a great deal of cultural difference in the context of having a dog. For example, I use a lead for walking my dog that goes around the snout and connects to a leash under the head. I learned many years ago from a trainer that this type of lead provides greater control, particularly for training, and in the case of Springer Spaniels, notorious for snatching edibles off of the street, it also helps the walker keep them from eating street items that might make them sick. I find I have to explain the lead to someone just about daily. Some people do everything they can to avoid us, because they assume that anything that’s placed near the snout means your dog is vicious. People ask me all the time if my dog is “bravo” (angry), the common term used for an aggressive dog. Still others feel the need to stop and lecture me about how cruel it is to use that kind of lead, saying things like, “Can’t you see he doesn’t like it?” On one occasion, someone stopped me … I thought to pet the dog … and actually pulled the lead off of the dog’s snout!

Another interesting discussion I’ve had with people has to do with neutering. If you’re not planning to breed, most dog owners in the U.S. will have their pet neutered (male or female) at a young age. If you get a pet from a shelter, it’s typically already done or is a requirement for adoption. Advantages of neutering (or what’s referred to these days as de-sexing) include the reduction of behaviors such as mounting, urine spraying, and some forms of male aggression due to the decrease in hormone levels. In addition, it can reduce or eliminate other undesirable behaviors such as separation anxiety and barking, and also pretty much eliminate the chance of ovarian or testicular cancers (there’s always a chance of some form of stump related cancer, though extremely rare). Every time I’ve mentioned neutering Wilson, I’ve had pretty heated discussions. I’m told it’s cruel, he’ll get fat and lazy, he’ll have emotional problems, and any number of other things. On one occasion, as I tried to explain the reasoning behind neutering a dog, including health and security benefits like not running off to mount a neighboring female in heat, the man I was talking with quickly retorted, “If it’s so healthy, then why aren’t you neutered?!” (And, of course, I had the wit to respond, “Because I’m not a dog!”) I’ve discovered that in some instances, resistance to neutering is a convenient cover for not wanting to spend the money for the surgery. In others, it’s plain ignorance about neutering (which, of course, is universal and not unique to Colombia or any other country). But even more culturally relevant is the perspective based in natural law. The Roman Catholic Church holds the view of natural law provided by St. Thomas Aquinas particularly in his Summa Theologia which is that it’s a system of law that is determined by nature. I’ve been told more than once that it’s “natural” for my dog to have testicles and that I’m going against nature, hence the will of God, by neutering him.

On another occasion, I asked a colleague if he could look after my dog for a day. He responded that he “didn’t have a balcony at his apartment.” I had to think about that one for a minute to determine why that had anything to do with what I was asking. I’ve since learned that one way in which people care for their dogs here is to put them “outside” for the day when they go to work … as in on the balcony. Keep in mind that most balconies couldn’t hold more than a chair or two. I guess that might make sense to an apartment dweller here in Bogota, a city of 12 million people with high rise apartments being the norm. It just never crossed my mind that caring for my dog would mean leaving him on the balcony for the day. I suppose it’s doable, just not an idea I’d ever considered. … I guess that is yet another cultural difference. (I would have been happy to have him use my apartment for the day, but it was clear he didn’t consider that an option.)

As I continue to think about cultural difference, I also find it helpful to reflect on it in the context of other activities. In a recent conversation with a friend we were discussing a number of things related to getting work done in Colombia and he used the word “incompetence” in the context of my indicating how a particular task might get accomplished. While that wasn’t the word that came to my mind, and my immediate reaction was that he was speaking from his own (North American) cultural perspective and associated expectations, it got me thinking about how we define those things and what they say about our thinking. Is a particular behavior or action necessarily a sign of “incompetence” or is it a reflection of “cultural difference”? How do we decide? Aren’t those distinctions both culturally defined? If so, in what ways do they reflect culturally defined expectations? Might something I think is a sign of “incompetence” just be a reflection of my own cultural perspective and expectations? At the same time, at what point do “culturally defined” and “cultural difference” simply serve as an excuse and avoidance of the reality that a behavior or action may, in fact, be a reflection of incompetence? Is our unwillingness to name something as “incompetence,” and/or to hold others accountable and to a particular standard, actually our fear that we’re being neo-colonial, culturally hegemonic, paternalistic, and so forth? When do we stop being knee-jerk liberals and begin treating others with dignity and respect, which includes being willing to hold them to similar standards to which we hold ourselves, at some level of expectation that we can mutually define and agree upon?

Is everything challenging just a matter of cultural difference, or are there things on which we can agree are wrong or need to change in some way? For example, if our governments create trade agreements with certain economic behavioral expectations, is it enough for one party to renege on those expectations on the grounds that, “Well, it’s just a matter of cultural difference”? At what point can we justifiably have expectations of one another? How do those expectations get defined? … by whom? … and for whom? At what point do we stop beating ourselves up, or allowing others to beat us up, over our paternalistic, colonial, and imperial pasts? In what ways is it healthy for us to continue to journey in our understanding about these issues, and in what ways is it dysfunctional for everyone involved to allow that journey to dominate our relationships and interactions? In what ways can and should we engage one another regarding issues of expectation and cultural difference?

… and maybe none of this has anything to do with the price of tea in China, and I need to stop being the sociologist and get on with caring for my dog.

The Other Side of the Street

Out on our morning walk, I decided to stir things up a little. My initial purpose was to get Wilson out of “auto pilot” mode so he’d pay a little more attention to my commands … one of those puppy training tricks. But as we shifted to the other side of the street, I began to realize that the world looked a little different than it did from the initial side of the street we usually walked on. I began noticing things I’d never noticed. Gardens I had never really seen before … doorways that looked entirely different up close or further away … entire buildings that took on a different appearance from a new vantage point … and so forth. It was like we were taking an entirely different walk.

I remember reading something years ago about how one of the best ways to stimulate your thinking was to drive a different way to work every once in a while. The idea was that you would have to think about your trip to work, rather than simply go through the motions of your everyday commute, which subsequently would turn on your brain and stimulate your thinking. I tried it, and it seemed to work. So for years I would walk or drive a variety of different ways to the office as a way of stimulating my early morning thinking.

So walking down the other side of the street got me thinking. While there is a very literal aspect to seeing the world differently from the other side of the street, as I’ve stated, there is also a metaphorical aspect to my comment about perspective. Living somewhere else enables the same affect … you see the world a little differently than you might otherwise while being in the same place. For example, many of us note the dysfunction in our political system in the States. But by living outside the U.S., I also see the dysfunction in political systems all over the world, and likely, in a different context.

I’ve noticed that many pundits, academics, and authors have been talking about the rise of “crony capitalism” and the failures of capitalism. We’ve seen, they note, tax systems that favor the rich, government regulations that protect companies over consumers, abuses in financial systems, and election to the U.S. Congress as a ticket to wealth and membership in the upper class (or what some today refer to as the “political” class). In the States, political pundits on the left decry all of these issues and more as a failure of capitalism. And while they may have a point, you don’t have to look far to see that it may not only be a U.S. manifestation, and it may not be capitalism that’s failing, but democracy.

Politicians around the globe benefit from crony capitalism and political corruption. Politicians vote themselves top salaries while in the same breath try to justify the need to cut social programs. Their staff and family members become millionaires during their time in office. To use an example, it’s estimated that since Cristina Kirchner’s husband, Nestor, was elected President of Argentina in 2003 through a period of her own p​residency (up to 2010) their net worth grew from $2.5 million to $17.7 million​ (not a bad return on 7 years in office)​. In my mind, the wealth of politicians begs the question, “Do the rich become politicians, or do politicians become rich?” And while these need not be mutually exclusive questions, it seems that they raise a bigger question regarding the relationship between political power and economic wealth.

Many of us have joked about “the grass being greener on the other side of the fence,” expressing a certain point of view that reflects looking at other people’s lives and maybe seeing things we like, but don’t have. While walking on the other side of the street helps me see a different perspective, I find it helpful to note that the grass isn’t necessarily greener on either side of the fence. In fact, in my not so humble opinion, the world is overdue for ​a major ​renewal. Frankly, to use a Western expression, Rome is burning. Just look at Libya, Egypt, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, and the Ukraine … the murder rates in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala … the political violence in Rwanda and the Central African Republic … the rising tensions​ between Asian neighbors … and the list could go on. Our political structures and institutions, social structures, and economic systems are all failing us. Capitalism has been twisted and perverted by cronyism and greed … a $6,000 shower curtain, anyone?

​Democracy has been so distorted in parts of the world that it makes a mockery of any semblance of political representation. A variety of socialist systems have tumbled down due to corruption, cronyism, and mismanagement. Monarchies and Parliamentary Monarchies haven’t fared much better. But before we despair and prepare for the second coming, we’d do well to remember that we’ve been here before in the past​ and not-so-distant past. The fall of a number of world empires, The Dark Ages, The Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and two World Wars all come to mind. The struggle for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, and anarchism reflected times of great social turmoil and upheaval, and arguably, were the results of the Industrial Revolution. And it wasn’t so long ago that the U.S. was struggling with the assassination of a President, the embrace of civil rights, facing the political corruption of Watergate, and dealing with a very unpopular war (Vietnam). And then there’s the fact that a fair amount of what we’re seeing and experiencing globally today has everything to do with the failures and downfall of colonialism. For example, borders throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East were arbitrarily drawn by departing colonial powers, leaving behind messes like we see in the Middle East such as with ethnic Kurds spread across four different national boundaries (Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria).

We’ve seen failures and abuses of structures and systems throughout the years, all of which have led to upheaval, refinements, and eventual changes. Empires and tyrants have fallen, monarchs have been deposed, political revolutions have raged and fizzled, political systems have collapsed, and economic systems and structures have had to be transformed. In 1637 there was the Tulip Mania Bubble that had a major impact on the emerging world economy. In the 1790s there were multiple post-war financial crises in the U.S.. And then in 1929 the crash of Wall Street led to a world-wide economic meltdown that we know today as the Great Depression.

History is replete with examples of socio-cultural, political, and economic messes. As I ponder the various turmoils of today’s world, I’m reminded of my metaphor of Rome burning. According to historical records, Rome burned for 6 days and the fire took with it over 70% of the city. In the weeks following the fire, some blamed the Emperor Nero while Nero took the opportunity to blame a relatively small group of Christians living in Rome who he subsequently fed to the lions. But when all was said and done, Rome bounced back into a glorious city of marble and stone, and eventually into a city, ironically, that became known as the home of the Pope …​ Bishop of Rome, Holy Father, Vicar of Christ and leader of the world-w​ide Roman Catholic Church.

So where will our struggles lead us this time? … to electronic democracy?… to direct democracy? … to benevolent dictators who evolve into new forms of tyranny?… to new economic structures and systems? … to the development of a new kind of “world” bank? How will (or will we) share the world’s resources? … How will we think about global warming and climate change? … What role will emerging technologies play in the future of governance? …  in the future of daily economic activity?

For me, personally, it always comes back to my faith stance. Before I’m anything … Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Capitalist, Socialist … I’m a Christian. And part of my faith stance is my sense of hope and a belief that all will work out as God intends and in God’s time. In the meantime, I’ll continue to do what I’m doing … live out my faith in the best way I know how, live out my baptismal call in service to others, do my civic duty as best I can working for the greater good, and continue to discern God’s purpose for my life, the church, and the world.

… and all that from walking on the other side of the street.