Life, News, and Ideas by Russell Riding
I just read the work Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a professor of Philosophy at Princeton. I wanted to share a few ideas from him, and some ideas about interacting with people from other cultures.
Appiah philosophizes about our relationship with other cultures and ideas to keep in mind when interacting with our other-cultured friends. He puts arguments in a modern context, of course, but in an interesting and relevant way. For example, he writes “if I walk down New York's Fifth Avenue on an ordinary day, I will have within sight more human beings than most...prehistoric hunter-gatherers saw in a lifetime.” Our prehistoric ancestors may never needed skills to interact with other cultures, besides a few ambassadors. Now, things have changed. We need to develop skills and rules to interact with each other. This may not be natural, because our cultures did not develop this way. We each have beliefs, religions, tradition, and cultural values and norms which differ, sometimes significantly.
Appiah describes, on many occasions, his culture growing up. He was raised in Ghana, on the West side of the African continent. In that society, traditionally, mothers were much more responsible for their children than fathers. In fact, uncles of children were typically the father figures of his culture. This has been changing, due to outside influence, many fathers now live with their families. Anyhow, I mention this for two reasons. First, Appiah is well-qualified to discuss cross-cultural communication, both because he is a Princeton professional, with many years of philosophy study and practice, and because he has actively served in two very different cultures. He has many other interesting examples and stories to discuss his arguments, drawing from Ghana, the United States, and other places.
He makes many points, but chiefly, he provides solid support for the dismissal of Positivism, which is the dominant philosophical system in dealing with many cultures. In a nutshell, the Positivist contextualizes every idea as a value or belief, depending upon its evidence. The end result is that most any behavior can be rationalized in the Positivist frame of reference. Appiah has many compelling arguments for dismissing the Positivist view. He outlines logical falicies with Positivist reasoning, but my favorite rebuttals draw from Sociology. Essentially, though there are behavioral outliers (such as extremists who believe in extinguishing entire cultures), most cultures have generally accepted behaviors, and these have striking cross-cultural significance as well.
In other words, no matter what part of the world you are from, most of your ideas about how other people work will serve you well. In every culture, there are babies born, children taught, people surviving, believing in metaphysical/religious ideas, and the like. So, too, does every culture have many common accepted behaviors. So, just because we don't understand every belief or idea, does not mean we cannot come to consensus on the proper policy or behavior.
In fact, Appiah says that to understand and agree with every person and culture is outside the scope of getting along. And, that it would be very difficult to accomplish. So, even though we can't agree on an idea or belief, we can certainly agree on policy and behavior. This is because belief and thought differ, but general behavior does not.
There are, however, some cultural behaviors we do not understand which trouble us, at least from a Western standpoint. One example that Appiah discusses is female circumcision. In the West, we see it as a mutilation of the body. But, it is understood differently in Middle Eastern cultures. So, what do we do? Appiah says we must agree to disagree, in order to get along. At any rate, if we practice male circumcision, to disagree and attempt to stop female circumcision is hypocritical.
Appiah states that, though there are some cross-cultural controversies, generally we agree on acceptable behaviors, and those are also the most important ideas to establish internationally. For example, the right to life is cross-cultural. Also, slavery is widely regarded as unjust. So there are many important ideas we can agree on.
The most important message I gathered is discussion of ideas and policy might be difficult, but must be done in order for healthy relations across the globe. Also, we may not agree on beliefs or ideas, but we can agree on policy and behavior, even if our reasons differ. In fact, we must discuss and debate for our mutual survival, because, even if we disagree with another, it leads to some understanding and respect.
