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Ohayōgozaimasu

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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culture, decision making, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving

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One way to mis-frame a problem is to use your own cultural framing when you are in another cultural context. Of course, most of us recognize that different languages are spoken in different places. Communication is much more time-consuming and error-prone when you are speaking different languages. But the frameworks that we use can also be different and those can be more subtle. 

The first time I visited Japan, around 1977, I had spent some time learning something of the Japanese language before arriving. I had had some experience learning French and a bit more learning German. As a native speaker of English, when you learn a German word or a French word, you can generally find cognates in your own native language for most German or French words. I find that helps me recall the German or French word. 

For instance, my first word as a child was supposedly “Moon.” In German, “the moon” is “der Mund.” The vowel sound is very close to that in the English “moon” so it’s fairly easy to remember. In French, “the moon” is “la lune” which sounds very similar to “the moon” but is also related to the English words “lunar”, “lunacy” (people used to believe too much time in the moonlight could drive you crazy” “lunette” (an architectural space shaped like a half moon), etc. 

These similarities are not surprising because English grew out of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon but was heavily influenced after the Norman Conquest of 1066 by French. Typically, English has words related to both the French word for something and the German word. For example, in English we have the word “hand” which is similar to the German “die Hand” and we have the words “manual,” “maintain,” and “manicure” which are similar to the French for “le main.”

In fact, this duality is so common, that if you happen to know that the German word for “the forest”is “der Wald” (which is like “the woods”) then you can be fairly certain that the French word will be similar to “forest” and indeed we have “la forêt” in French. Or, if you happen to know that the French word for the English “the foot” is “le pied” (which is similar to “pedicure” and “podiatrist”) you can guess that the German word will be close to “the foot” and, indeed, it is “der Fuß.” 

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When it comes to Japanese, however, these kinds of mind games are not possible. In a few cases, foreign words have been adopted by Japanese. “Coffee” for example is “kōhī” but apart from a few such cases, you won’t be able to use your knowledge of Indo-European languages to much advantage in learning Japanese. 

If you enter a “Restaurant” in Berlin or a “Restaurant” in Paris, you will not only see many English words, you will be almost certainly following the same “script” for how things happen at a restaurant in England, American, Australia, or Canada. You go in. You are typically greeted near the door by a host or hostess. You are shown to your table. You are given a menu. You order off the menu. Your meal is brought to you; you eat; you get a bill; you pay your bill. You leave.

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When I went to have my first breakfast in Japan, I went with dictionary in hand. I knew I had not come anywhere close to learning enough of the language to manage on my own. But what I had not counted on was that the “script” for eating in that particular restaurant was quite different from what I was used to in America. 

I went in, and sure enough, I was greeted by my host. “Ohayōgozaimasu” which basically means “Good morning.” She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to show me to my table, however, so I began to walk past her and find a table on my own. She again said, “Ohayōgozaimasu!” But, this time, she said it, a little more insistently; indeed, she moved as though to block my entry. I checked my little Japanese guidebook and again said, “Ohayōgozaimasu!” I said it a bit more enthusiastically and distinctly this time, sure that I had mispronounced it slightly and that was causing some confusion. I moved to walk past her and this time she once again said “Ohayōgozaimasu!!’ She bracketed this with some other things that were not in the guidebook and that I did not understand. And, this time, there was no mistaking it. She was actually blocking me from entering the restaurant! 

Two things occurred to me. First, I must not have said “good morning” correctly. Second, I must have said “good morning” without being sufficiently polite. I tried again, this time, being sure to bow to her and she had bowed to me. 

No. Something else was going on. 

Eventually, she explained to me with Japanese and gestures that there was a completely different script in play. Here, you were supposed to go in where the hostess greeted you and then you were meant to immediately pay the price of breakfast. In return, you receive a wooden token. You walk in, choose your own place to sit, and display your wooden token on the table conspicuously. Then, at some point, your breakfast arrives. You eat your breakfast and then you leave. When do you order? You do not order at all, because everyone has the same breakfast! 

Next time you find yourself confused by what is happening, you might consider that you are playing a part in a very different script. 

By the way, a traditional Japanese breakfast is probably my very favorite breakfast. Yes, I love pancakes. Yes, I love bacon and eggs. But, I not only love eating a Japanese breakfast. I love how I feel afterwards: satisfied, clean, healthy, and not sluggish from being overfed. What is shown in the photo below is close to what I had. The main difference is that I was given a raw egg, not tamago. As recently as 1977, raw eggs did not presumptively have salmonella. 

You may or may not ever have the pleasure of visiting Japan. If you do, I can pretty much guarantee that you make some sort of cultural faux pas. If you do, you may or may not realize it, because, generally speaking, Japanese are polite and will cut you more slack than if someone brought up in Japan did as you did.

And, speaking of guaranties, I would be surprised if you did not at some point find yourself not understanding the “language” of those you were working with who came from a different background or discipline. Sure, some words will be similar. Others won’t. And the worst will be words that are spelled and sound the same but in fact refer to different concepts. For example, in my field, psychology, the word “reinforcement” has a very specific meaning that is similar but distinct from its daily usage. The word “force” in physics means something quite different and more objectively measurable that the “force” of an argument or my using “force” to get my way. 

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Even more subtle traps, some inadvertent, arise because people you collaborate with may have different cultures. In my research roles, for example, it came to pass that I had occasion to interact with people with a business background. In some cases, I was asked to present a “business case” to show how a product or research program would have a good ROI. They wanted me to mathematically “prove” an idea financially worthwhile. 

Only they did not really want a “mathematical proof” in the sense that a mathematician (or a research psychologist) means “mathematical proof.” Of course not! How could they. They want reasonable assumptions with some back up and a plausible story, laced with math, that can be used to support their decision to their management. If I had a “mathematical proof” that they could not understand, they would be unable to use it with their management. Partly, this is a case of a word meaning different things, but more, it is a story about two different cultures.

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Business propositions can never be proven to be wise ahead of time. Unlike the frictionless plane of the physicist or the “controlled lab experiment” of the psychologist, or the well-defined axiomatic system of the mathematician, actual business outcomes can be impacted by a huge number of unpredictable factors; e.g., weather, legal actions, public relations disasters, etc. In addition, a scientist usually has a longer time-frame in mind. While the business decision maker only needs to explain or persuade a layer or two of management who will typically spend less time and have less expertise than the presenter, the scientist must be prepared to present her or his work to the most brilliant and experienced people in the field.

These and other natural differences between “business thinking” and “science thinking” lead to different cultures. In 1977, when I visited my colleagues in Japan who worked in Human-Computer Interaction, I felt more akin to them while talking about computing than I did to my next door neighbors back home who worked in sales or construction. 

Every field develops its own culture. 

Be aware. Be respectful. 

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The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Introduction to a Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

Index to a Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation 

The Myths of the Veritas: The Forgotten Field 

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/20/the-mysterious-american-continental-breakfast/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/05/imagine-all-the-people/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/21/choosing-the-script/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/11/28/take-a-glance-join-the-dance/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/25/the-only-them-that-counts-is-all-of-us/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/11/03/opponent-does-not-mean-enemy/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/25/process-re-engineering-moves-to-baseball/

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How do you Re-culture a Culture?

11 Saturday May 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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collaboration, competition, cooperation, culture, essay, innovation, life, marketing, sports, teamworkd

We now live (at least in the USA) in such a divided and divisive political climate that I hesitate to bring up something that sounds political but really isn’t. I don’t even have a position, at least as of yet. It’s just a thought I had while I was reaching out to people in India and inviting them to my blog. 

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Here it is. The USA has a very competitive and individualistic culture. It’s been that way my whole life, but now, it’s insanely so. For one thing, people spend proportionally much more time watching TV and playing on the Internet than they do interacting face to face. In effect, everyone is “competing” not just with local talent, but with people from all over the country. In a nation of 330,000,000 people, 329,999,999 of them will not be the best runner in the country. The vast majority of people will never be winners. This may be why lotto and the Reader’s Digest drawing may be so appealing to so many. 

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But it isn’t just running, and throwing, and high jump where we see competition. We have contests around human activities that have traditionally been mainly about bonding and cooperating, not about competing and winning. We have contests about cooking, and dancing, and singing. I grant you that in the past, small communities might have a dancing contest, once a year. But most of their activity was cooperative activity face to face, and certainly not cutthroat competition. Now, the contest is not part of the yearly festival. The contest is all there is. And, for the most part, the contest is all that is broadcast. 

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It seems that we here in America, with many exceptions and so on, have a culture of individuality and contest is everything there is. Oh, and of course, money. For instance, for far too many Americans the first question they ask about anything is “how much money?” I’ve seen articles that purport to tell retirees what the best place to retire is. Some of those articles focus solely on the financial aspects. Some articles ask which college provides the best education but all they really talk about is ROI. 

We’ve actually accomplished a lot as a nation with this kind of crazy culture. It helped us achieve in terms of invention, discovery, and innovation. But what if the problems of the 21st century are of a fundamentally different nature? What if most of the problems we faced in the 20th century resonated well with a culture that encouraged competition, but that now, as we embark on the 21st century, the nature of problems has shifted. Perhaps now we face problems that require a much more collaborative and cooperative cultural attitude in order to solve? 

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Naturally, these are large trends that I’m talking about. Not every single problem we faced changed lock-step overnight. Let’s examine some examples though. A 1930’s problem might be: “How can we clear cut this forest as cheaply as possible?” And the logging company that solved that problem “won” and got rich. A 2030’s problem might be framed this way: “Is it feasible to provide material by using this forest in a sustainable and humane fashion? How?” One lends itself fairly well to top-down direction. One does not. The reader can guess which is which. 

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A 1950’s problem might be: “How can we entice consumers into buying one of our new cars when their old car still works?” A 2050’s problem might be: “How do we provide a transportation system that is effective, efficient, and pleasant for everyone involved?” One is about manipulation and disregards collateral damage. The other collaboratively looks to a sustainable solution without side-effects that are so negative they outweigh the good done by the transportation system. 

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Can American culture evolve quickly enough to be a partner on the world stage in the 21st century? If not, the absolute best we can hope for is slow decay full of internal bickering and hostility as people point fingers and shout loudly in order to establish blame. 

Do we really need to change our culture and change it quickly to avoid that? Or, is the emphasis on competition and individuality still the right way to go? 

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Other countries and cultures are already ahead of us in cooperation. Look at the cost versus benefits of their health care systems for one. 

How can we change and work together as a culture to a develop a more cooperative view when we seem to be so divided and competitive? That is a real puzzle. 

Do you have a piece of that puzzle? I’d love to hear about it. 

Or, do you think we should “double down” on competition and individuality? I’d love to hear about that as well.

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What if…?

21 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, health, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

competition, creativity, culture, family, life, politics, stories

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This is a kind of print medium, backed-up electronically. So, it will still be here in a few minutes, hours, and days. Here’s my suggestion. Read through once while your inner “Yeah-but”-ite chorus is otherwise occupied. You know the “Yeah-but”-ites. We all do. “Yeah but, You can’t possibly afford that.”  “Yeah but, you aren’t smart enough to do that.” “Yeah but, no-one would be that kind.” “Yeah but, yeah but, yeah but.” Give the Yeah-but chorus a TV show to watch, knock em out with whiskey — whatever it takes. Read the following once and see where the train of thought takes you. I have been thinking about this in terms of “America” because that’s where I happen to have been born and where I live now. But I suspect you can read what is below and substitute the name of your own country wherever it says “America.” If you do that, can you see these suppositions as equally applicable to your own?

You can always go back and rip my suppositions to shreds when you go through it a second time. In fact, knock yourself out. Read it fifty times and find fifty things wrong every time. First, read it once though, without doing that. Just flow along with the story. I realize it’s a story. I’m not trying to steal your pocketbook or convince you of tax reform or against it or any of that. It’s simply a “what-if” train of thought. I don’t know exactly where it will lead and neither will you, although the “Yeah-but”-ite chorus would insist after line one, that they knew exactly what I am going to say and why it would never work. By the way, if you do go back and read it a second time and find some better alternative, unstated assumption, another line of speculation, etc., I really would like to know. Anyway, here goes…

What if…

The vast majority of Americans actually wanted pretty much the same things for the country?

What if…

The vast majority of Americans wanted the basics for everyone and a few luxuries and a better life for their kids?

What if…

There actually is enough wealth for everyone to have the basics and a few luxuries and build a better life for their kids?

What if…

That were true regardless of political party, religion, region of the country, education level, gender, race, generation, or occupation?

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What if…

Agreements and Cooperation actually occur across every boundary in this country far far more often than acts of crime, or even nastiness?

What if…

Acts of crime or violence or scandal are reported far, far more often than the much more numerous cooperative actions?

What if…

Media have discovered that they make a lot more money if they report on sensational rather than inspirational or informational content.

What if…

The politicians, in order to gather our contributions, tend to exaggerate the negative attributes of their opponents and minimize their own while meanwhile exaggerating their own positive qualities and down-playing those of their opponents.

What if…

There were a vast number of improvements that could be made that everyone would agree on?

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What if…

Our roads, bridges, and schools could be repaired and rebuilt?

What if…

We discovered that whether buildings and bridges stood or fell depended on physics and not on the political persuasions of the architects?

What if…

We made education a higher priority and spent more money on it than on cosmetics?

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What if…

We worked together to improve health in the country by encouraging everyone, male and female, young and old, to exercise more, eat healthier meals, and spend more time interacting with each other than watching TV?

What if…

We forced politicians to do what was best for their constituents rather than what was best for their wealthiest donors (when those are in conflict — they are not always in conflict)?

What if…

We focused on working together to accomplish what we agree on while we have a full and open debate on those things we don’t agree on?

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What if…

We took it upon ourselves every day to give each other the benefit of the doubt?

What if…

The next time we are stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, instead of weaving frantically in and out to “save” a few seconds, we kept up as smooth and steady a pace as possible while minimizing lane changes, accelerations, and breaking?

What if…

When we disagree about ends or means, we first recount what we have in common and how we want to deal with disagreements rather than rushing to resolve things once and for all immediately.

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What if…

We thought that life itself was a pretty cool gift to be enjoyed and that many human activities such as gardening, dancing, reading, making love, making music, teaching, participating in sports, walking, eating — that they are all pleasurable in and of themselves and not means to some other end like making more money?

What if…

It were possible for people to get together in neighborhoods, cities, states, nations, and world-wide to find, formulate, and solve problems even without governments?

What if…

We saw every human being to be an individual with their own desires, talents, ideas, issues, that to them were just as important as our own are to us?

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What if…

The successes, failures, short-comings and talents of each individual were partly based on luck and individual effort, but were also largely based on the actions of their parents, grandparents, neighbors, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, strangers, teachers, doctors, Founding Fathers, explorers, scientists, artists, writers, bakers, truck drivers, fire fighters, police officers, farmers…?

What if…

A major way to reduce abortions would be to educate women better and to give them economic opportunity, and if they did get pregnant without wanting to, they had a much wider variety of choices than: 1. carry to term and give them up for adoption and never see them again or 2. carry to term and then struggle to make ends meat while trying to take care of a a kid on their own or 3. abortion?

What if…

Everyone promised to take care of every child born and make sure any mother who wanted to had the economic, social, and educational resources to give that child an opportunity for a full happy life with the mother being as involved as she wanted to be?

What if…

People viewed jury duty as a civic responsibility rather than something idiotic to be avoided so they can concentrate on more important things?

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What if…

People cared as much for the looks of their neighborhood and yard as much as they cared for the appearance of their clothes and hair?

What if…

Every American realized that people from other countries had just as much pride and hope for their own country as we do for ours?

What if…

People who made millions of dollars despite not producing any tangible work product or useful service were not viewed as some higher form of life, but as a kind of parasite on society?

What if…

In other words, actually providing direct value by building, discovering, cooking, growing, teaching, for instance, were viewed as much more valuable than redistributing money that was created by primary work.

What if…

We all realized that we are someplace we’ve never been before and no-one knows for sure what the path forward is, but that whatever the correct path is, it cannot be based on mutual fear and hate but must be based on love and trust?

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What if…

Realizing that, we collectively tried to determine how to follow or build paths of love and trust and found ways to overcome hate and fear?

What if…

We used our choices of media to watch and products to buy, not just on how much momentary pleasure they gave us, but also on how they were impacting the world and its people?

What if…

By working together we can build a better world for everyone?

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What if…

By respecting everyone, we can come to a better appreciation for the complexity that we live in?

What if…

Things are just a means to ends while life is an end in itself?

What if…

People came to see that everyone on earth is closely related?

What if…

People saw life on earth as something precious and worth saving and that that was even more important even than getting a new pair of sneakers?

What if…?

earthfromspace


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City Mouse and Country Mouse

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

architecture, culture, ethics, politics, psychology

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In our childhood, many of us heard the fable of the city mouse and country mouse. Briefly, the city mouse invites his cousin, country mouse, to visit him in the city. At first, the country mouse is quite impressed with the array of food available in the city mouse’s home. Then, the house cat comes with sharp claws and long pointed teeth and nearly rips them both apart. In the end, the country mouse scampers back and shouts back to his city cousin something to the effect that he’s happy to have his bread crumbs in peace rather than risking life and limb in the city. The exact words, I don’t recall, but they have probably suffered in the translation from Aesop’s ancient Greek to modern English and even more severely in the translation from mousespeak to human speech. Most likely, the original sounded something like this: “Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.”

Aesop Fable of the Mice

No doubt there are advantages and disadvantages for a mouse to live in the city or the country. Both places have sources of food and both have predators. But what about human beings? Here too, there are advantages and disadvantages of living in a large city versus living in the country or a small town. While human beings undoubtedly have many behaviors that are influenced by “instinct”, people are also capable of learning. Moreover, because we humans can talk and write and are fundamentally social beings, not only do urban and rural environments result in different kinds of individual skills, in a fairly short time, they also result in different cultures. These differences are not arbitrary but are adaptations to characteristics of the two environments.

In cities (and especially coastal cities), people typically come in contact with a huge variety of people. Many metropolitan areas feature different cuisines, attractions, races, religions, sexual preferences, and so on. Take the matter of cuisine. It is easy in New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, or San Diego to find restaurants that serve excellent Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Vegetarian, Vegan, Ethiopian, Jewish or Indian food. I happen to love them all! But if someone hates any of these options, it is also easy to avoid that option. You don’t care for Indian food? No problem. Don’t go. Suppose however, you are with a group of friends and everyone else wants to go for sushi which you happen to hate. The vast majority of urban Japanese restaurants in the USA offer other options that are “close to” traditional American cuisine. So, you can go to a Japanese restaurant with your friends and order steak teriyaki while they all eat raw fish.

But let’s just suppose that for whatever reason, you are so appalled by raw fish that you get sick watching someone else eating it. Well, you simply don’t watch. Now, the thing about living in a big city is that you don’t have to create this solution on your own. That’s what everyone does. If they see something they don’t like, they look away. They learn not to dwell on it. It’s very crowded in a city. If you walk around or take public transportation being “offended” or “put off” by anyone who speaks differently, dresses differently, eats differently, worships differently, looks different, etc. you are going to quickly become completely stressed out and become one completely unhappy camper. People in large cities learn to be polite and focus their energy on the places and people that give them joy. It takes time to find friends but eventually you find people who share fundamental interests and values. They might be next door, but more likely, they are are a subway ride or long walk away. There are literally more than a million people in any large city that you never get to know. Because there are so many choices, plenty of opportunities arise to do what you like and many people who will join you. You might love tennis, roller skating, and art museums. You might never step foot in the science museum or the public library or the parks. It’s all fine. The culture of the city is tolerance for everyone. Yet, people find those they relate to from a huge pool. If you come from, say, China, and you want to stick with other Chinese people, you can easily do that. You can survive in New York City or San Francisco without having to experience Mexican food or even without learning much English. On the other hand, if you want to become assimilated into more “mainstream” American culture and eat pizza every day and listen to jazz and dress like an American Indian — hey, you’re welcome to do that too. Because everyone passes by people that are so different every day, almost everyone learns tolerance. In essence, you see, there is not “one” New York City or Los Angeles, there are thousands! People essentially live in their own version of these cities and become close only with a small group of like-minded people. Of course, your “tennis friends” might be different from your “roller skating friends” which might be a slightly different group than your “art museum friends.” But even putting all your friends together, the people you know are only 1/10,000 or 1/100,000 of the people in the city.

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There is a down side. You may never get to know your next door neighbors. You and they may simply have very different tastes and interests. Besides that, there is a lot of turnover in a city. Often, there doesn’t seem to be much point in becoming friends simply because you live next door partly because they (or you) are quite likely to move away in a month. There is a worse down side as well. At the extreme, the distance that people create mentally to accommodate the extremely close physical proximity and the culture of leaving others alone also makes it possible for someone to be stabbed on the street without anyone helping. This phenomenon has been studied and called “bystander behavior.” People are actually much more likely to help if they are the only witness than if they are one of 100. Each of the 100 looks around and sees that none of the other 99 are doing anything and so conclude, all evidence to the contrary, that nothing much is happening or else the other 99 people would be helping. In any case, the “culture” that arises in cities is typically quite tolerant of differences, somewhat distant from the vast majority of your fellow citizens but certainly allows for close friendships based on any combination of a hundred different factors. Because large cities develop a culture of tolerance for other types of people, that fact becomes known and attracts still more diversity which in turn encourages more tolerance and diversity.

There is another important aspect of living in a large city. It is crowded and complex. You constantly have to “trust” people you don’t know who drive the taxis, deliver the food, come to fix your cable, police the streets and so on. These are typically not people you know. In fact, for the most part, you won’t even see them again. But it is impractical not to trust all these strangers. Most of the time, the trust works out though on rare occasions, it backfires.

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The experience of living in a small rural town is completely different. There are not 400 different restaurants to choose from. There might be three. Possibly one of the three is ethnic, but it is far less likely. A Korean restaurant in New York City can be quite profitable if only .01% of the NYC population goes there regularly. That won’t work in Woburn MA or Bend OR though, let alone in a town of 5000. A small town in America may well have a baseball diamond and a public library. But they are unlikely to have a holography museum or a laser tag facility. The sheer small number of people living in a small town means, in essence, that the citizens must agree on what types of restaurants are available, what recreational facilities are available, what clothing stores are in town and so on. In addition, everyone in town is likely to run into everyone else again and again. Rather than learning to avoid and look away and ignore things you don’t personally care for, people in small towns instead lean in. They want to know what exactly is going on with everyone else in town. Everyone soon knows who the town drunk is and who is having an affair with whom. People in small towns do not typically think, “It’s none of my business” but that’s exactly what they think in large cities.

For these reasons, people in small towns are less likely to learn the skill of looking away. If they personally hate sushi and end up visiting a relative in a big city and then end up in a Japanese restaurant, they are both fascinated and disgusted by watching their cousin eat sushi. They could theoretically just look away, but that is not a very well learned skill for most. For these reasons, the culture of the small town also evolves to be different. People who thrive on diversity and believe strongly in tolerance feel as though they don’t belong and they also feel deprived of interesting possibilities so most end up moving away. Of course, that makes the town even more homogeneous. The small town ends up being much more “tight knit” than a random group of 5000 people in a large city. It seems much less likely people would fail to help someone being stabbed on the street (though I haven’t actually tried that experiment).

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In a small town, since people know almost everyone they interact with, they don’t really have to trust strangers all that much. If someone new delivers the mail, the small town person is likely to ask whether they just moved in town, where they live and so on. This would be considered quite rude and even weird in a big city. People in a small town probe to know people in their small town. They tune in not out. They are much more likely to choose friends partly on the basis of location rather than vocation. Because of this cluster of factors, people in one small town are more likely to stay in that small town. It is probably much more “disruptive” to move from Woburn MA to Bend OR than to move from New York City to Los Angeles. Of course, either move means you will have to learn where things are, get a new driver’s license, make new friends etc., but the “culture” of cities is becoming similar all across America and indeed, all across the world. Two small towns can have quite different cultures.

People from large cities are likely to feel quite different on a number of issues compared with people from small towns. People in large cities have been trained and acculturated to simply look away and ignore things and people that they don’t like and to focus on what they do like. Conversely, people in small towns have learned to depend on everyone and so want everyone to agree on a much larger range of issues. There are enough resources in a large city to have scores of museums and hundreds of restaurants and scores of clothing stores. People don’t need to agree on taste. But in a small town, that’s not true. There is much greater pressure to agree on what the “right” museum is for the town, what the “right” kind of food is to serve at the handful of restaurants and what the “right” kind of clothing might be.

People in a small town are likely to know the police that they come in contact with. If a police officer in a small town arrests someone or even shoots them, people in a small town are much more likely to know both the police officer and the person arrested. Provided the police officer is known as a generally fair-minded person, the people in the small town are much more likely to be sympathetic. In addition, they may well known that the person arrested (or even shot) is and has been a “bad guy” the whole time he’s been in town.

In a large city, by contrast, people who read or hear about someone making an arrest or very unlikely to know personally either the policeman or the suspect. They probably still have a presumption that the police probably acted correctly. However, their reactions are much more likely to vary from person to person that what you would find in a small town.

Needless to say, cities do differ from each other in terms of culture and so do small towns. For example, Murray Hill, New Jersey is not a huge city (population around 3500). However, many of the people there were from Bell Labs, a large famous research institute long part of AT&T but now part of Nokia. That particular small area includes residents from many countries, liberal and very well funded schools, and so on. Small towns that grow up around trade centers, farming communities, research centers and universities, or coal mining undoubtedly have very different typical “cultures.” Similarly, a large city like New York that has people from all over the world is quite different than one of the Chinese cities around large-scale manufacturing facilities (e.g., Guangzhou or Shenzhen. Nonetheless, as a general rule, living in a small town versus a large city tends to produce different skill sets and a different outlook and culture.

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What can small town cultures and big city cultures learn from each other? How can these cultures tolerate each other? Is there a way to have the advantages of both? If humanity keeps exponentially increasing population, will there even be any “small towns” left in 100 or 500 years? To me, city culture and small town/rural culture mirror many of the distinctions made by Jane Jacobs in “Systems of Survival.” I recommend this as an interesting (and short) read.

Systems of Survival

 


(The story above and many cousins like it are compiled now in a book available on Amazon: Tales from an American Childhood: Recollection and Revelation. I recount early experiences and then related them to contemporary issues and challenges in society).

author page on Amazon

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