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Second dimension:
INDIVIDUALISM
Collectivism and Individualism as used here do not have any political meaning. That is collectivism does not refer to power the state holds over individuals but rather the role of the individual within the groups the individual belongs to.
Collectivism-Individualism in the family
The vast majority of people in the world live in societies in which the interests of the group prevail over those of the individual. The first group in any person's life is the family. Family structures, however differ greatly between societies.
In collectivist societies the 'family' within which the child grows up consists of a large number of people living closely together, not just parents and other children. Others in the household can include grandparents, uncles, aunts, their children, more distant relatives and maybe servants. This is known as the extended family. As children grow up they learn to think of themselves as part of a group, a relationship that is not voluntary but given by nature. The in-group, us, is distinct from other groups them. Almost all questions of ethics in such cultures can be reduced to group loyalties.
Membership in the in-group is the major source of one's identity and the only secure protection that one has against the dangers of life. In return for protection and help in time of need, one owes lifelong loyalty to one's in-group and breaking this loyalty, intentionally or not, is the worst thing a person can do. Between the individual and the in-group a relationship develops which is both practical and psychological.
A child in a collectivist family is seldom alone during the day or night. In such a situation of intense and continuous social contact the maintenance of harmony in the social environment becomes a key virtue. In most collectivist cultures direct confrontation is considered rude and undesirable. The word 'no' is a confrontation and is rarely used – 'you may be right' or 'we will think about it' are typically polite ways of turning down requests. In the same vein the word 'yes' does not necessarily indicate agreement but maintenance of communication.
Children also learn to take their bearings from others when it comes to opinions. "Personal" opinions do not exist, they are pre-determined by the group. Some kind of family conference is necessary before an opinion can be given on a new issue. A child who repeatedly voices opinions deviating from the group's is considered to have a bad character.
Resources are shared. Members with paid jobs are expected to share their income to help feed the entire family. Similarly a family may collectively cover the expenses of sending a member to receive a higher education, expecting that the student's future income will also be shared.
Obligations in the family are not only financial but ritual as well. Family rituals such as baptisms, marriages and funerals should not be missed for any reason.
The primary method of social control is shame, which is social in nature and is felt when misbehavior becomes known to others.
Having one's transgression known to others causes more discomfort than the transgression itself. Shame is felt not only by the person committing the infraction but also by the group(s) to which they belong.
Shame causes a loss of face, which is socially derived respect. That comes from acting in a way that meets the requirements of the social position one occupies.
Given the importance of family in collectivist societies, interactions with outsiders can be problematic. Therefore many collectivist cultures have found ways of creating family-like ties between people who are not related through biology or marriage. Compadrazgo in Latin America is a model of such an institution and compadres and comadres are bound to treat each other as fellow in-group members.
In contrast to the model of the extended family, a minority of people in the world live in societies in which the interests of the individual prevail over those of the group.
Here, children are born into families consisting of two (or one) parent(s) and possibly other children. This is the nuclear (or Eskimo) family. Children from such societies quickly learn to think of themselves as 'me', their personal identity, distinct from other people who are classified not according to group membership but by individual characteristics.
Speaking one's mind is characteristic of such societies as it is felt that a class of opinions can lead to a higher truth. Adults should know how take direct feedback constructively.
Children are encouraged to develop opinions of their own and a child who only echoes the opinions of others is considered to have a weak character. Parents of children in individualist cultures will be proud if children at a young age do small jobs in order to earn money. Then they alone decide how to spend it.
Instead of shame, the prime method of social control tends to be guilt, which is felt by a person who violates rules of conduct. Whether the infraction becomes known by others is irrelevant. Only the person who transgressed is supposed to feel guilt.
Guilt causes a loss of self-respect, which comes from acting in a way that the individual finds appropriate.
As children in individualist cultures pass into adolescence and young adulthood, they are expected to depend less and less on their parents and not at all on more distant relatives. They have been socialized from a very young age to aspire to independence and adult children are expected to leave the parental home as soon as possible. It is not rare for adult children who have left home to reduce relationships with their parents to a minimum or to break them off altogether. In no way is a healthy person in this type of society supposed to be dependent on a group.
Collectivism-Individualism in school
In collectivist societies there is a stress on adaptation to the skills and virtues of being an acceptable group member. This leads to a premium on tradition. Learning is usually seen as a one-time process, reserved for the young, who have to learn how to do things in order to participate in society or the workplace.
Within the classroom, students are expected to treat each other as an in-group and competition is discouraged and working in groups is encouraged. Care is taken to prevent teachers (or students) from losing face.
A diploma is an honor to the holder and their in-group and entitles the holder to associate with members of higher status groups, for example to obtain a more attractive marriage partner. The social acceptance that comes with a diploma is more important than the individual self-respect that comes with mastering a subject. The temptation to obtain diplomas in irregular ways can be strong.
In the individualist context the emphasis is placed on preparing the individual for a place among other individuals. This means learning to cope with new, unknown and unforeseeable situations.
The purpose of learning is on how to learn. The assumption is that learning in life never ends. It can continue after school or even university studies through further training and specialist courses.
Within the classroom, each student is supposed to look out for themselves and competition between students can be strong and overt.
Self-respect for teachers and students is achieved through academic independence. A diploma improves the holder's economic worth and their self-respect, it provides a sense of achievement in and of itself that is often more important than the contents of the courses taken.
Collectivism-Individualism at work
In a collectivist culture, an employer never hires just an individual but a member of an in-group. The employee will act according to the interests of this in-group which may not always coincide with the employer's self-interest. Therefore the hiring process usually takes the in-group into account. Preference is given to hiring relatives, first of all of the employer but also of other persons already employed. Hiring persons from a family one knows reduces certain risks. Also, relatives will be concerned with the family's reputation and will help correct misbehavior of a family member.
The workplace itself may become an in-group to some extent. The relationship between employer and employee is perceived in moral terms. Poor performance is not necessarily a reason for dismissal. Performance is often best when operating with a group goal and anonymity. Management is perceived of as the management of individuals.
In the individualist context, family relationships are seen as undesirable and many companies have rules against relatives working together.
The relationship between employer and employee is a business transaction a calculative relationship between buyers and sellers. Poor performance by the employee or an offer of better pay from a rival are considered legitimate and acceptable reasons for terminating a working relationship.
"Matching realities" (Elgin)
One of the hardest things for people to accept about human communication is the uselessness of logic. It comes as something of a shock to discover that logic has been proven to have almost nothing to do with the effective of persuasive language. In fact, language can be so far out on the edges of total non-logic that it approaches insanity without keeping it from functioning perfectly well as a means of persuasion.
This is one reason why advertising is generally so awful. Advertisers know that a tasteful, clever commercial causes people to remember the commercial and not the product. Logic might indicate that irritating commercials would cause buyers to avoid the product being advertised. In reality though, obnoxious advertisements have a more positive than negative effect on sales.
George Miller formulated an extremely useful rule for all kinds of communication, which will be referred to as Miller's Law hereinafter: In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.
Notice that he does not say you must assume it is true if it is logical or reasonable. Just assume it is true (in the sense that the other person is accurately conveying how they perceive reality) and proceed.
This is perhaps easier said than done. Nonetheless, the skill of entering other people's realities is perhaps the most important communication skill of all. But because of the difficulties, it is helpful to examine carefully how people build and live in their reality in several steps.
Reality Statements
It is a great problem that the human senses, the only means for people to perceive physical reality, cannot be relied on to accurately do so.
You feel the earth beneath your feet as steady and unmoving (except in earthquakes or other extraordinary occurrences). On the other hand, according to the scientific consensus, it is rapidly spinning as it travels through space at a speed of many thousands of kilometers per hour.
People have to deal with the disconnect between what their senses tell them vs what the scientific consensus tells them. One way of dealing with this awkward situation is to construct a set of statements about 'reality'.
These include uncontroversial propositions such as:
'Water is a liquid.'
'People need oxygen to breathe.'
As well as seemingly contradictory statements such as:
'The earth is stable beneath my feet.'
'The earth is spinning as it travels through space at great speeds.'
There are also personal reality statements:
'It's fun to drink beer.'
'I look better in blue than in red.'
People treat social reality in the same way and there is a category of general reality statements about life as lived on a day to day basis.
'Poland is in Europe.
'Work is no fun.'
When a group has enough reality statements in common, you have a culture. Much of the uneasiness of 'culture shock' comes from having to interact with people who appear to be operating under a very different set of reality statements.
Not all reality statements apply to all areas of life however. People also have to accept small sets of auxiliary reality statements that only apply to one particular part of life.
The general rule is "It's wrong to kill another human being." But soldiers can only function in combat by temporarily accepting the conflicting reality statement 'It's necessary to kill as many human beings of a specified kind as possible'. Outside of combat a soldier sets aside the combat reality statement and abides by the first statement.
Constructed Realities
People understand fiction, fairy tales and television dramas because they are willing to give up their knowledge of the real world for a while. Certainly movie audiences realize at some level that the man who was just shot is not really hurt.
But it is necessary to suspend that knowledge and assume that his death was real to understand the movie. It would be alarming if someone asked why the man's wife was weeping when the man is unharmed and isn't her real husband anyway.
When you agree to believe in the worlds you see on film and read about in books, you are accepting constructed realities. What you may not realize is that many other constructed realities exist as well. But instead of watching or reading them, people live inside these constructed realities. These are realities made up of reality statements and held together by metaphors.
What are Metaphors Phor?
The formal pattern of a metaphor is not complicated. The basic pattern is: X is Y (with the condition that this is not literally true). That is, selected features of Y are mapped onto X. A good metaphor is immediately understandable to the intended target. Metaphors are extremely useful in both describing something new in terms or something already known and in helping people perceive the familiar in new ways.
A poet who compares his lady love to a swan is counting on the reader to correctly match the relevant features (grace and beauty, perhaps a slender neck) and disregard features of the swan such as standing around in mud and eating insects.
Standardized tests in many countries contain many problems that ask questions like "Cub is to bear as calf is to ___." This is because satisfactory functioning in any culture depends in many ways on the ability to understand metaphors and to quickly discover the relevant matching points and disregard the irrelevant ones. Small children have a difficult time with this and must deal with it constantly as they develop their language skills. This is why when an adult says "He shot down my argument." A child not recognizing the metaphor might ask "Did he have a gun?"
Metaphors in Real Life
All the preceding is important, because it give clues as to how people understand the world and their place in it. This crucial in learning to apply Miller's law and be able to enter the constructed realities of other people, an extremely useful skill.
As an example, assume that you've taught a course for a large bureaucracy. You were supposed to be paid by the first Monday of the month but now it's past the second and there's no trace of your money. This is not theoretical matter but the real world with bills to pay.
You go to the relevant office and to try to deal with the situation and are meet with a clerk who seems to be your approximate age and background. You explain the problem, at which point the clerk who can help you (or not) begins the following dialogue:
Clerk: Look, it's only been a week and according to the rules, I'm not allowed to do anything until it's been two weeks. If the deposit isn't made by next Monday, then come back and I can do something then.
You: But what am I supposed to live on until then?
Clerk: I'm sorry – I can't help you with that.
You: There's gotta be something you can do in a case like this.
Clerk: No, there's nothing I can do. The rule is, we have to wait until the check is two weeks late.
You: But couldn't you go see if-
Clerk: Look, I don't make the rules, I just work here. There's no reason to give me a hard time.
At this point the clerk seems heartless or incompetent and you level of frustration is high. You have logic on your side but it's not getting you anywhere and the temptation to escalate into even more open confrontation is strong. But before you do that, it might help to apply Miller's law. Assume the clerk is telling the truth about her reality and try to figure out what she's saying could be true of.
The crucial feature in the interaction above, is that there is a lot of talk about rules. To make a long story short, it's quite probable that at work, the clerk in operating in system which has the following reality statements:
"There are a lot of rules and they cannot be broken. There are no exceptions. Rules don't have to make any sense, either one at a time or taken together. Somebody (or a bunch of somebodies) made the rules. Considering what the rules are like, those responsible couldn't be basing them on logic, therefore appealing to logic is a waste of time. I didn't make the rules, therefore appealing to me is also a waste of time. I'm not responsible for the rules or their effect on other people. Any change in one rule would mean changes in the whole system, which would be a horrible mess. Nobody who isn't part of this could possibly understand it, especially because it doesn't make any sense. Therefore explaining it would be a waste of time."
This metaphor where people solemnly follow silly rules made by other people and that make no sense can be referred to as The Game of Life.
When playing chess, there's no logical reason that a rook can only move in straight lines while a bishop can only move diagonally. And if you take your opponents chess piece they aren't really hurt. A losing player who becomes angry is clearly not being rational. The only thing it's legitimate to be upset about is a violation of the arbitrary rules (like a player who tries to use their bishop as a rook).
Now, with this information, one tactic with some chance of success in the interaction with the clerk is as follows:
You: I don't want to give you a hard time at all. What I need is someone like you who has a clear picture of the rules and sense enough to stay with them 100 per cent.
Clerk: Thank you, lots of people don't see it that way.
You: Well I do. And I know how lucky I am, I could have gotten some ding-a-ling.
Clerk: You got that right.
You: Now let's see. The rule is, my check is supposed to be deposited by the first Monday of the month. That's the rule. And I'd appreciate it very much if you'd find out who broke the rule so I can take this matter up with them.
Clerk: You've got to be kidding.
You: I never kid about rules. You can get in big trouble that way. You start breaking rules, there's no telling where you'll end up or what you'll end up doing there. I intend to see to it that whoever broke this rule learns that rules are not a joking matter.
Here, you've entered the clerk's reality and are playing the Game as hard as you can. You've chosen the weakest point in the set of reality statements (that there are no exceptions). The clerk can't very well say that though the rule says the deposit has to be made on the first Monday of the month that rule isn't meant to be taken seriously. If she says that, then she's admitting that rules have exceptions. And if that rule has an exception then so can the rule about waiting two weeks.
If you're logical and insist that of course there is something she could do, then she could declare you out of the game and ignore you. But you're playing the game and that means she has to as well. Part of the game metaphor is that you can't quit in the middle just because you're not having any fun. With a little luck, before long, she should come up with the concluding move:
Clerk: Hold on a minute while I go see what I can do.
Why couldn't you just logically say: "Why I bet my name got left off the list by mistake. I'd appreciate it if you could check."
Clerk: That's impossible.
You: Impossible?
Clerk: Our staff does not make that kind of mistake.
You: But I think if you
Clerk: NEXT!
There's no way to know absolutely what metaphors you'll face in real-world encounters. But when you're dealing with a bureaucracy of any kind from the smallest to the largest, usually the metaphor in use inside the bureaucracy will be the Game of Life or some variation (in the US, it will often be the Football Game of Life).
Those who work in bureaucracies are faced with absurd situations all day long, every day. They have to function surrounded by nonsense that no logical person could defend. But they can't just sit around and laugh about it (especially when outsiders are around). They have to behave as if it made sense. The only way to function in such an environment and maintain their sanity and/or self-respect is to treat the whole thing as a game.
Therefore even if you don't feel skilled at spotting other people's metaphors and reality statements you'll do well most of the time in bureaucracies if you just try playing The Game.
And if it doesn't work? What if you try to join the team and the staff member won't play along? In that case there are two likely possibilities.
The first is that the staffer is brand new and doesn't know the rules well enough to play along with you. In this case, as politely and non-threateningly as possible insist on seeing a more experienced staffer.
The second possibilit is that you've met a glitch. This person does not have the same set of reality statements as the rest of the group and is not using the Game of Life as a metaphor.
To this person, it isn't a game, it's a deadly serious business.
If the clerk is a glitch, she probably has a reality statement that goes something like this: 'Because I'm responsible for the money, it's really my money. I have to make sure it's in the company's account where I can make sure it's safe.' A clerk operating with this statement will do nothing to help you get your money. It hurts her to let any of it go and if she can hold on to yours, then she will. Note, that she has no desire to spend or use the money for herself, she just needs to know where it is at all times in case she has to account for it.
What do you do when faced with a glitch? You try to see somebody else or you give up. There is no way to interact with such people and get your money. Worse, if you enter their reality you'll no longer think that you ought to get your money.
A bureaucrat who takes their work seriously when everybody else is playing the game is probably a highly ethical person who has trouble seeing their work (or any work) as less than completely serious. They always constitute a serious problem for the bureaucracy itself and those who must deal with it. Treat such people with the same caution that you would show live rattlesnakes – don't startle or disturb them and avoid them as much as you can.
Systematic Metaphors
There is no way to predict what metaphors you will encounter, but in most cultures a number of Systematic Metaphors will be encountered again and again.
The Proud Ship Sailing (for many younger people this has become The Starship Enterprise): Captains go down with the ship. Women and children first. There's always land ahead. For every ship there's a safe harbor. The wind fills our sails because we sail for God and country. It's always darkest before the dawn. Proud ships always have trusty crews. The captain's word is law. Proud ships are always tidy and shining, no matter what.
The Glorious Battlefield: Soldiers are brave, strong and right. No soldier ever gives up so long as there's breath in their body. It's a privilege and an honor to be hurt, even to die, in battle. God is on our side. A soldier follows orders, always and without exception. Duty is more important than anything else, no matter what. All soldiers are honorable and their word is always good. We're all in this together.
The Happy Factory: It's fun to work. Good workers don't care about money, they work for the sheer joy of it. The boss cares about the firm but their primary concern is the well-being of the workers. The workplace is clean, safe and cheerful. When workers grow old the boss will take care of them. When the boss grows old the workers will weep at their loss – and if they are lucky the new boss by the child of the old boss. If any worker is having problems, then all the others will do what they can to help them.
Daniel Boone's Place: Anybody worth a damn stands alone. If you have to tackle a bear, you tackle a bear – no complaining allowed and no dawdling. There's plenty of everything for everybody and if you're doing without then it's your own damn fault for being shiftless and cowardly. The cabin floor is always clean, there are no weeds in the garden and no fleas on the dog. Don't be beholden to anybody. If the Indians come – and they will – it's okay to fight them but you're not allowed to resent that. It's a way of demonstrating your abilities. If you don't work, you don't eat. There will always be copperheads and mosquitoes and poison ivy. If you don't see them, be wary. Only sing on Sundays.
The Rose-Covered Cottage: For every man there is one perfect woman and vice versa. There is no bathroom in the cottage because the perfect couple don't have bodily functions. Nobody is ever angry or irritated in the cottage. The cottage is always clean and cozy. The perfect couple who live in the cottage don't need friends or family or anybody except each other. A baby is allowed as long as it is a perfect baby. Nobody grows old in the cottage although the perfect man may become mature. The roses that cover the cottage are always in bloom and have no thorns.
There are also people who have chosen their metaphor for a particular life role a particular person from their culture. For the US, this might mean that instead of 'My work is a Glorious Battlefield' or 'My home is the Rose-Covered Cottage' they opt for 'At work I am John Wayne' or 'At home I am Wonder Woman'.
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