Cultural Conflicts

The fish out of water gets eaten. A foreigner out of his culture clashes. And although he might not reach as tragic an end as the fish, his tragedy lasts a lifetime. Nobody adjusts completely.

The bottom line is that to properly develop ourselves, we must develop proper communications... and to do that we must know each other well.

Its amazing how much of what we do is based on culture... from how we wake to how we sleep. Most other cultures wake naturally to daybreak. Here we get up in the middle of the night to an annoying alarm clock and possible heart attack (although the Yankee work ethic is obviously more efficient). At night, other cultures bring out the wine and talk around a table, bonding, but here we eat Doritos and hush the spouse to watch TV.

Occasions are completely mind boggling to foreigners. A Valentine's Day card seemed as committal as a diamond ring when this 11-year old boy got a certain smile from a little girl named Jo.

Putting down the foreigner has been a staple of TV for a century. It's amazing too how much bias there is against other cultures, and how little we care about it. Instead, we laugh at the jokes and thus put down others. There are an awful lot of bigots out there... and most of them don't look like bigots, or admit being one.

The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish literal translation read "Are you lactating?" Did somebody not explain that translations must carry culture? Evidently not.

It happens the other way around, too... Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Foreigners truly do end up in the melting pot, but the sadness is that by then much permanent personal damage is done by ignoring culture... both coming and going.

-©2007 by Willy
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