One underlying difference between cultures is a culture's location on the group-individual scale. I have read often of the greater emphasis on group identity and group decision-making in some other cultures than mine. The book The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar is a good one on the individual and group because she is an articulate explainer of her experience of being a girl growing up in a highly organized Indian religion with many rules and obligations. She enthusiastically followed them all. Then, her family moved to the US and she attended public school here. She learned of new and quite different obligations to make good decisions and choose her own paths. The contrast was startling. And, formative.
Another eye-opening book on this subject is The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett. He contrasts basic thought processes in the East and the West and finds the East often finds a way to picture things in cycles, rising and falling, like the clock face or the months of the year. The West is more likely to think in terms of a line, a ladder, a progression, like a single life from birth to death. Both ways of organizing a picture pay and both are learning more and more about using the other's methods.
Since the underlying orientation of our thinking can be quite subtle and quiet, we don't tend to notice it or the depth of allegiance we feel toward it. Americans are used to appeals to this or that in the name of freedom and individuality and SELF development, both of the self and by the self. Iyengar makes the interesting point that the majority of marriages on this planet are arranged by the parents or brokers or others than those who marry each other. Yet, a central theme of my life has been the importance of choosing the right partner for marriage. So, the idea that it might be better for someone else to choose is shocking.
True, in real life, my parents and friends definitely let me know what they think of a likely candidate. In romantic movies, meeting the parents is taken as a big sign of strong interest. So, as usual, one type of thinking or one way of doing things might not be as different from another as it first appears.
The recent surge in "iPhone", "iMac", "mySpace" and other advertising and product-naming strategies may emphasize the possibility of the individual. My God-given (??) right to choose my brand of car for myself is emphasized in one or more tv ads these days. Still, what my wife, kids, and friends say matters, too, even in the land of the red, white and blue. It is still the place of "e pluibus unum".
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
