Happy new mess

Theories are great. Human beings try to understand themselves and the world around them using categories to make this possible. Statistics, hypotheses, ideas. This is just fine. But can we be flexible and free enough to step in and out of these categories?

I was thinking about this, when I came across Bourdieu’s interview by Laure Adler. He was telling the journalist about a card he had previously received from a friend, saying: ‘Happy new mess’ (in French Joyeux Bordel instead of Joyeux Noël = Merry Christmas). I more and more back this vision of the world where everything is complicated but not incomprehensible, where we can be in the dark without fumbling about.

Although nowadays everything is massive and global, some room should be left for the individual dimension: At the end of the day, the world is made of people and every single person is much more than a theory, fortunately or unfortunately. I very much liked Peggy McIntosh’s approach in her paper published in the book Educating citizen for global awareness, where she identifies four phases in building global awareness. Phase I means womanless and all white. Phase II admits ‘exceptional others’. Phase III is about coming to see and to understand local and global issues of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and so on. It observes power systems and brings in issues of justice and care. But Phase III can be polarized and get arrested in victim studies. Then comes Phase IV, the phase of plural stories, plural experiences, everyone’s experience, anywhere in the world. In Phase IV everyone is a knower, everyone’s daily life is history, politics, literature, drama, economics, psychology and ecology. Within Phase IV, binary thinking is seen as too simple. These four first interactive phases point toward an eventual Phase V: a version in which the world of knowledge is redefined and reconstructed to include us all. The author considers it will take 100 to 200 years to conceive Phase V depending on which decisions we will make in the coming years. I believe we could actively be part of the building of this phase. We could teach our children and students not to be scared of ‘mess’ but rather to accept it and feel comfortable with it. Living with doubt, confusion and a ‘more disturbing’ (pluralistic, multinary) vision of things could be part of our approach to life and teaching. Art can help us with this. 

After all, it is just a matter of habit. We tend to be willing to control everything forgetting that this control-mania narrows our horizons and prevents us from ‘including’. ‘Excluding’ is indeed a form of rejection, of any kind, and rejection comes from fear. The same fear that keeps us away from “mess”. We just cannot bear the ‘non-understanding’ phase. We do not have enough space for it. A constant stepping back and moving forward, as a camera in a shooting, is needed in order to see the details without missing the overall view. Perhaps, we could teach our children and students to dig into stories with no fear, as well as to step back for a moment, every now and then, in order to grasp the global picture. As we could teach them not to be scared of the truth but, on the contrary, to actively look for it. As Bourdieu said: “People consider sociology as a sad subject matter, but I don’t agree with that. On the contrary, I think it is a ‘happy knowledge’ because it is the only one allowing us to get free of determinism”.   

All the above might call for a new and more inclusive concept of identity that I will call “transidentity”, which could go with a new wanted “transdisciplinarity”. Of course “identifying” comes from comparing with what is different, with the other, the alterity (if there was not diversity we would not even know who we are), but once we have experienced this difference and therefore become more conscious about ourselves, we can then access a broader understanding and challenge our sets.

Alterity can, for that matter, also be experienced within our own culture, when we find ourselves not being comfortable with the conformed “majority”. Majority and minority can indeed be relative concepts. We can easily find ourselves passing from a ‘majority condition’ to a ‘minority condition’.

Are we able to accept relativity? Can we deal with confusion? Can we live with mess? Can we include what is different?

I have often thought about the concept of community. In some countries and regions, the surrounding community is there to replace a lacking state and to help people in case of need. This is, in my opinion, a very positive thing but can this ‘community’ stretch enough to receive people from other countries/regions who experience the same social and economic condition and are just in the same need? Can a broader sense of “community” arise? Should the criteria of admission in this community be based on needs and not on ethnical origins? In this regards, I would like to mention a remarkable suggestion that Nel Noddings makes in her book, above mentioned, to replace the concept of ‘rights’ with the concept of ‘needs’, and to focus more on human beings and not that much on citizens.

All this is only possible if we develop more empathy. How could we make this happen? Should we introduce philosophy and ethics as mandatory subject matters in business, communication and administration schools? I have always thought that some economists, managers, politicians are able to make the decisions they make just because they have never seen hunger with their own eyes; they have never experienced directly discrimination, exclusion, injustice. Decisions are easier to make in an elegant office of a lavish building in a luxury street of a rich city. And television does not help at all with that because you just have to press a button and all those plagues become unreal. As if they never existed.

Should we strongly wish that mankind was attacked by a virus from inner space called empathy?  

E.

The reverse culture shock

There is the culture shock. And then there is the reverse culture shock. The latter is when you come back home after many years abroad and you feel like a foreigner in your home country or home town. This can be very common and I would love other people to share their experience with all of us.

It happened to me in many ways, from the very beginning when I started to travel at age 18. I went to Morocco and when I came back I felt like I wasn't the same person as before. But when I was home and people just asked me how my trip was I realized they couldn't really understand what I had experienced, perhaps they just wanted to hear a few words whereas for me an entire book wouldn't be enough to explain why I felt like I had changed so much.

It's just something... you cannot really share. Maybe that was the first time I really felt alone at home. There are the ones who leave and the ones who stay.

It continued like that after every trip I had but even more after living abroad for 8 years. That's where I started liking the German expression Die Wanderung, which is the state of wandering around without belonging anywhere. That can be dreadful. I couldn't squeeze myself enough to fit in my home town, I had seen too many things, talked to too many people, felt the world and experienced its huge diversity, how could I ever be able to share that with my people? Because, human beings feel compelled to share, right? And when they can't... well, it's painful.

Two years ago, the reverse cultural shock was the reason why I left again for another two years abroad. I couldn't bear it. And now that I've decided to come back I still feel vulnerable, like I missed many things of the local history, I'm missing some references and 8 years of my daily life are completely unknown to everybody here. I could have been kidnapped by aliens and come back, that would be the same. It's like a hole of 8 years.

And yet, I cannot say I'm not grateful for the wonderful experiences I had, I'm just striving for a brand new way to creatively find my way in this new globalized world, where more and more of us have, are having and will have this kind of experience.

Global or local? Wise or delirious?

E

Culture, Personality and Learning English

Another wonderful article sent by one of our followers:

I have been teaching English as a foreign language on the Internet for three years now.  It’s work that I love.  I get to travel the planet while sitting at my desk (sometimes in my pajamas!).  I talk with Brazilian engineers, Chinese doctors, Spanish civil servants, French job-seekers, Japanese medical representatives, Egyptian expatriates, and Mexican students, among others.  As I try to de-mystify the English language for my students, I get to hear first-hand what is going on in our small world.  The Present simple: “How is the weather today?”  and “What do you usually eat for lunch/for dinner?”  The Perfect tenses: “How has the family changed in the last 20 years?” and “Have you been personally affected by the tsunami/the revolution/the crisis?”  As a very curious city girl from the USA, now living in a small French town, I can’t think of any other job which could spare me from the collateral damage that inevitably comes with the culture shock.

In fits and starts, one faux pas at a time, I have figured out how to navigate my way in my new country.  Nothing can heighten cultural sensitivity in a curious city girl from the USA like being married into a French family which has lived in the same town for seven generations.  No hugging.  No enthusiastic waving of the hand.   Bread placed on the table, not on your dinner plate.  Hanging out with the locals, who refer to me at times with derision and at other times with pride, as l’américaine, I can really see how American I am and always will be. 

I’ve always shied away from stereotypes and generalizations, preferring instead to greet each individual as just that – an individual.  Someone it is only possible to know over time and through experience.  Yet, my own daily Franco-American experience seems to insist upon the validity of certain national characteristics.  And my daily experience as a teacher of various nationalities seems to confirm this validity.  After all, even as we each have our own remarkably unique personalities, we are all in some way or another, the product of the remarkably unique social and cultural environment in which we have been steeped.   

As if in confirmation of the link between culture and personality, I began to notice that my students interacted with me and approached their on-line lessons in nationality-specific ways. 

 How to explain the meticulous Japanese who always go above and beyond the call of duty?  Why read only one chapter when you can read the entire book, write a synopsis, and create a PowerPoint presentation?  What about all the Chinese who are hard-working students and brimming with undying love for English and English speakers?  The Brazilians who, almost without fail, treat their lessons like verbal physical training programs.  Ready.  Set.  Go!  Even the beginners speak during the entire class without stopping 40, 60, 120 minutes or more minutes.  Then there are all the Italian male students who can’t help but flirt with their teacher.  The Germans who insist that they must improve their English, but who actually speak and write better than the average American (okay, not a fair comparison).  And the Koreans who don’t know that it is possible to have fun in life, let alone while learning English?  Then there are the French who know that it is possible to have fun in life, but who haven’t made that link with learning English.  The French come to English class like most people come to the dentist: flinching, their mouths reluctantly open, but no sound coming out.

Curious girl that I am, I wonder if any other teachers have noticed any such generalizations among their students.  Surely, if student behavior can be categorized according to nationality, surely teachers must exhibit certain predictable characteristics according to the passport they carry.

What are your observations?

M.A. Chester

Limbo or mambo?

The condition F. talked about in a previous post is what my Brazilian friend calls the limbo. One day, he told me something I have not forgotten ever since: Once you leave your own country, you will always live in a limbo and never completely come back: if you stay abroad you'll miss what you have
left at home and if you go back home you'll miss what you have left in the new country.


How are we going to deal with the limbo? Can we make it more pleasant? Or could we just accept it for what it is and learn to deal with that?

Would it be better to keep the desire of leaving but never do it? Is the limbo condition better than regretting never having left? Is it better to be a happy naïve? I've been wondering  about these things for ages.

That's why in my first post I was talking about a nirvana hard to bear...

Should we just dance, dance, dance in order to forget?

What do you think? Send us your comments.


E.

The entire world in my hometown

A great news: Today we received our first sharing. Here it is:

When I was a child, I had the desire to travel far. I did not really feel rooted in my hometown, Vienna, Austria and felt like homeless. Perhaps this was because my grandparents where not from there and the family had migrated often. 


I had the vision that the world would come to us and this has actually happened in the meantime. Vienna is a multicultural city now, and I like it much because I can meet people from different countries and cultures. It was not necessary for me to travel much. But sometimes now I think of leaving my homecountry for a place where things would be easier for me to manage. But when I really have to decide my family stands out against it, and at the end of the day, I feel at home here and would feel strange in another country. 


I would be willing to take many things with me if I moved, in order to feel at home also abroad. The Internet gives me the opportunity to meet people from all nations, too, and it`s easy to connect over far distances. 


I would have never believed that one day this would be real.... Margarete

Intercultural Competence

 I have always been fascinated by the term "cultural shock". Every time I thought of it, I imagined a scene of a an Amish woman walking on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, looking at all the women in tiny bikinis. If this really happened, how would the Amish woman feel? What would she think?

So naive of me. I imagined that culture shock happening in extreme situations such as the one described above, but never with me. After a year living abroad, I learned that culture shock is a much more ordinary event, happening every day with us all. And I think it's good.

I can illustrate the phenomenon with a simple anecdote. I was in a class one day, and one of the students brought her three-week-old baby to class. She had a presentation to make, so she asked the professor to hold the baby for her while she spoke. The professor's behavior was what really amazed me.

In my country, women hold babies in a very maternal way, either talking to the baby with that "baby voice" or caressing the baby's head. The professor did nothing of that sort. While holding the baby, she concentrated all her attention to the student's presentation, as she was supposed to. I, on the other hand, could not do what I was supposed to.

I could not believe how serious and professional my professor was. I could not stop staring at her. She was holding a baby, for God's sake! I thought she was cold, terribly cold to that poor little creature who did not ask to be in a university class in a cold morning. Or was I exaggerating?

The question, then, is: what is the problem with having a cultural shock? I know the answer for that. The problem is not the cultural shock; cultural judgment is what is really problematic.

On my way home after that class, I reflected on my behavior. Who was I to keep staring at my professor during a class, judging her because she was not cuddling the baby as if women in my culture do? I learned a good lesson, then: I am going to experience lots of cultural shocks in my journey here, and they are supposed to enrich me, not to make me judge others. 


                                                                                                                    F.   

The perfect country ;-)

After living in 5 different countries and visiting almost 20, I guess I started to dream about an ideal place where I would gather all the things I liked around the world. I would call this new country Kirghisia.

This country would spend much money on research and pay professors and teachers a lot like the US does; but university would be equally accessible and free like in Italy, with no difference between Grande Ecoles (business schools) and Petites Ecoles (universities). The school system would provide support to any student who might have trouble with any kind of subject matters or topics like in Finland, and kindergarten teachers would be given high credit since they deal with the most sensitive time of our lives (again like in Finland).
In this country, natural beauty products, food and medicine would be affordable and easy to find like in France and Germany.
People would wear Italian cloths and drink Italian coffee. They would also eat Korean kimchi, Portuguese bolinhas de bacalhau, Spanish paella, Mexican tacos, Japanese sushi......... People would have a sauna at home every night like in Finland, and get a massage every day after work like in Southeast Asia. Once a year, Rio de Janeiro's Carnival would take place, and in the beginning of June, the Bulgarian Rose Festival would occur. The sea would look like the Greek sea.

Social security would be like in Northern Europe and far from the US health system. Unemployment benefits would be like in France and there would be free bicycles all over the cities so that everyone would be able to get one and then leave it back somewhere after riding. Bicycle lanes would be everywhere like in the Netherlands. Life would be fun and surprising like in Naples and people would be welcoming and peaceful like in Bali. There would be many little grocery stores instead of huge dreadful supermarkets. There would be no one dying from hunger like in Buthan and Cuba.

Architecture would look like the Italian one and parks would follow the English style. Movies wouldn't be translated but only subtitled like in Scandinavia and France.

Tap water would be free like in Canada and you would be able to return everything you bought but didn't like anymore (before using it, of course) like in the US.

Trains would be always on time like in Switzerland and cannabis would be legal like in the Netherlands.

What else? Help remind....

E

PS: This is just a joke I wanted to share with you all. Of course there is no perfect country, but when I live abroad or travel I always have fun trying to imagine which characteristics of the new country I would keep and which I would discard. Generally, I'm not talking about cultural features, but more about political and social policies.