CULTURAL CONTEXT

“Every time you arrive in a new place, close your eyes and ask – keep the comparative gaze away from us. We want contemplative eyes in this place. This is our meditation.
If you travel with a comparative eye, you measure places, people, and cultures, but travel cannot be measured. Travel needs to be experienced. If you understand that, you take it into your daily life, in relationships, in education, and your worldview.”

For most travellers, the greatest gift of travel is exploring individual cultures. The most important and heartwarming experiences are meeting the locals in developing countries – the poorer they are, the more hospitable they are. Wherever you go in this fractious world, people are essentially the same and should be treated with simple fairness and respect.

To transcend the limits of individual cultures, one must first recognize and accept the multiple hidden dimensions of unconscious culture. We can all benefit from a deeper knowledge of ourselves. Stop ranking people and talents and accept that there are many roads to truth. No culture corners that path or is better equipped than others to search for it. No man can tell another how to conduct that search.
The natural act of thinking is greatly modified by culture. The West uses one of many ways of thinking. Logic is seen as synchronous with truth and is alienated from ourselves and nature. We think linearly rather than comprehensively.
Culture is a series of situational models for behaviour and thought. Many cultural differences can be traced to language.
Culture is not innate but is learned. The various facets of culture are interrelated. Touch a culture in one place and everything is affected. It is shared and defines the boundaries of different groups. Culture touches and alters all aspects of human life including personality (how people express themselves and show emotion), how they think, and how problems are solved.

Westerners use monochronic time, are serious, and do one thing at a time. This requires scheduling, segmentation, and promptness. As it is linear and segmented, it extends forward to the future and backward to the past. It speaks of time as being saved, spent, wasted, lost, made up, accelerated, slowed down, crawling, or running out. It is a result of our industrialized civilization. But, it seals off people from the group, intensifying relationships to 2-3 people.
It is learned and thoroughly integrated into our culture, treated as the only natural and logical way of organizing life. Lives must fit a schedule – when things are beginning to develop in a desired way, we must stop to conform to a preset schedule. It narrows one’s view of life – scheduling stifles creativity.
In polychromic time, several things happen at once. It stresses the involvement of people and the completion of transactions rather than adherence to preset schedules. Appointments don’t carry the same weight. One is seldom alone and one interacts with several people at once. Socially there is a greater centralization of control with a shallow or simple structure. Unconscious and unresponsive, it needs an insider or friend to make things happen. The organization is limited in size and depends on having gifted men at the top. For example, the Inuit life is not bound by a time clock as at work, but by tides.

Different cultures have unique ways of relating language to reality. The American Indians were deeply involved with each other, information was readily shared, and simple messages with deep meaning flowed freely producing a high-context culture. They are easily overwhelmed by mechanical systems and lose their integrity.
Low-context cultures are highly individualized, somewhat alienated, and fragmented. For example, German and Swiss cultures have relatively little involvement between people. They absorb and use man’s extensions without losing their cultural identity.

Stability and predictability are essential for society to develop and prosper. Culture has evolved to give man his identity. His total communication framework – words, actions, postures, materials, and how he works, plays, makes love and defends himself can be read correctly if one is familiar with behaviour in its historical, social and cultural context.
Man is unaware of a system of controls until things don’t follow the hidden program. A negative feedback system is frequent in intercultural experiences. We become aware of the structure of our system only by interacting with others who do not share that system – members of the opposite sex, different age groups, different ethnic groups, or different cultures. Cultural exploration begins with the annoyance of being lost. Control systems of the mind signal that something unexpected has arisen and we should switch off the autonomic pilot. In real life, we don’t see it this way – the inevitable response is to deny the problem until it is too late.

It is a formidable task to understand the deep biases and built-in blinders in each culture. The broad base was laid down millions of years ago in the old mammalian brain. It treats things as wholes, constantly synthesizes and comes up with solutions based on the past. To understand a given behaviour, we must know the entire life history of the individual which is impossible. Understanding oneself and others is a closely related process. 

It is natural to lump all movements together and not to distinguish between conscious deliberate racism and structural differences in cultural systems. There is a built-in tendency for all groups to interpret their nonverbal communicative patterns as though they were universal. All cultures have their characteristic manner of walking, sitting, standing, reclining and gesturing. The chances of being able to read nonverbal cues correctly decrease as cultural distance increases – even smiles must be seen in context. Synchronous movement is present in all groups. It is not easy to understand as most of us are used to dealing with second-, third-, or fourth-generation communication systems like language and writing. Northern Europeans are underdeveloped rhythmically, Man probably synchronizes everything to fit in and not appear too conspicuous. Syncing is very noticeable in high-context cultures but may have little meaning in the West. It is dangerous to attach a meaning to parts of non-verbal cues as these must always be read in context.

One way to handle information overload is by using context. Several things must be considered – subjective activity, the situation, one’s status in the social system, experience and culture. What one pays attention to or does not attend to is largely a matter of context.

As travellers, understanding culture is fraught with problems. Spending a short time allows only superficial interpretation. To understand a given behaviour, we must know the individual’s entire life history, which is impossible. Understanding oneself and others is a closely related process. Stop ranking people and talents and accept that there are many roads to truth. No culture corners that path or is better equipped than others to search for it.

• Inuit in the Canadian Arctic.
Travelling in different cultures is difficult when we don’t understand how they think and behave. I first learned this after working in the Canadian Arctic five times. Even though I was a family practitioner, I developed a dermatology referral practice and was hired by the governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut as a dermatologist. I worked in 25 towns west of Hudson’s Bay and saw much of the Canadian Arctic on five trips. It was a great cultural experience.
I thought it was my responsibility to spend money in every town. The Inuit have an incredible artistic heritage. They are most famous for their soapstone and stone carving but also do printmaking and handicrafts. Upon arrival in each town, I announced my desire to buy art. I soon had a parade of artists at my hotel door.
Each town seemed to have a specialty – Kugluktuk had lying caribou and igloos, Goa Haven had no soapstone so they carved a local fine-grained stone. Some of the artists there were internationally famous. My best pieces are from Joseph Suqslaq and Wayne Pala Puqiqnak. Their pieces sell for over CA$5,000 down south. I bought virtually everything I liked and eventually amassed a large collection of unique art.
When buying, I visited many of the artist’s homes, an eye-opening experience. They don’t like kabloonas (whites) visiting their home as they are often embarrassed by their poverty and habits whites aren’t used to. The old (and inappropriate) word for Inuit (‘the people’) is Eskimo which means ‘raw meat eater’. As there is no wood in the Arctic, the only way to cook was using seal blubber. It was easier to eat the meat raw and there was a natural deep freeze outside the door.
I could not imagine a culture more different than “down south”. Before the mid-1950s, they lived on the land hunting the only animal available in the winter, the fur seal. They had survived for thousands of years in the most inhospitable environment in the world, a testament to their ingenuity and resourcefulness. Once they were off the land, many problems arose – alcoholism, spousal abuse, unemployment, fetal alcohol syndrome, and poor educational achievement.
I left my last posting feeling very frustrated and that I had not made a significant contribution. I, like most whites who come up for short stints, attempted to interpret the culture. I wrote a long piece on my website called “Cultural Context” https://www.ronperrier.net/2013/05/02/inuit-understanding-cultural-context/. The Inuit view this as being arrogant and inappropriate. Some Inuit read the article, found me on Facebook and wrote angry harsh criticism.

• India
A similar situation happened when travelling in India. I can not imagine a country more different than ours. They do not follow any of our social standards of polite behaviour. I have never heard any Indian say please, thank you, or welcome (except occasionally in people working in the tourist industry). You could give up your seat on a bus for an older woman or a woman with a young baby and they never acknowledge your existence. When getting off a bus, one has to run a gauntlet of people trying to get on. Men constantly butt ahead of you when standing in line for a ticket, or any queue. Despite being the most religious country in the world (Hindus claim they have 36 million gods), and being fastidious dressers, they have despoiled their environment. Only 8 out of 3000 cities in India treat their sewage. I doubt that there is any water that is not extremely polluted. Garbage is everywhere and dustbins are rarely used. They have their animals all upside down. Cows are the top dog, closely followed by snakes and monkeys. Even rats are holy in one temple. Being reincarnated as a dog is the worst thing that can happen. Despite all this holy reverence, they abuse animals. People who can’t afford to feed their animals let them run loose and garbage is a mainstay of food for cattle, goats, and dogs. Outside of Bikaner, next to a normal garbage dump, hundreds of dead cows, most from intestinal obstructions from eating plastic, were deposited. Packs of dogs ate the rotting bodies! Holy cow! The list is endless.
Being Indian: Inside the Real India by Pavan Varma is a must-read for anyone travelling in India. It explains the Indian psyche and why it is so different than ours. It will change your view of Indians.
There is great Indian literature. City of Joy – A true story about living in the slums of Calcutta, Aravind Adiga – Between the Assassinations – A series of short stories set in one city in India. Very entertaining. White Tiger – another book about India. won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. Gives more insights into India, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in the Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo – beautifully written book, humorous about a Mumbai slum. Details the corruption rampant in Indian society, A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry. Is another great book about India – terrifying in showing how bankrupt this country is. Written about the mid-1970s, it is still just as bad today. The Satanic Verses: Salman Rushdie, Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese, and
Shantaram – About an Australian criminal living in Bombay.

• China.
Chinese are generally not well-liked by other tourists. But I would like to change your mind after 7 trips here.
After the civil war that ended in 1949, most of the Nationalists under Chang Kai Chek left for Taiwan. They were the intelligentsia of China. Many more of the upper social classes were killed in the Cultural Revolution. The final blow happened in the Great Leap Forward. Mao decided that steel production should rival that of England. Every town set up kilns to melt down their pots, door knobs and any metal. So much pressure was put on them that they didn’t harvest two bumper rice crops. 23 million Chinese died. In the 1980s, in most villages, the Chinese people had never seen foreigners. The conditions in the countryside and the poverty in China were eye-opening.
After the 1980s, China’s population was relatively rural and peasant without social skills. China has changed the most of any country since the end of the 1980s. When China started its economic ascent in 1990, China progressed like no other country with 500 million escaping poverty. Changes in social behaviour slowly caught up. That peasant background may explain Chinese social behaviour.
Chinese behaviour – horking, poor queuing, lack of social awareness, rudeness, poor communication skills and chewing with their mouth open. Horking (they think we don’t swallow our saliva either but spit it out in private), and spitting were common on my early trips, but I have rarely heard people horking on this trip  They still eat loudly with their mouths open. They lean over their plate or bring bowls to their mouth and shovel food in. 
Education is highly valued and possible with the small family size. Chinese are not socially outgoing like many Westerners. They are hard to have a conversation with.
The women are generally very stylish in dress and makeup but the men have bad hair and clothes. Most smoke. T-shirts are common and in a country where English is rare, virtually every shirt has English. Men often lift their t-shirts to expose their bellies.
In 2024, I made my 7th visit to China. I have spent three one-month periods living in my girlfriend’s hometown. She worked and I spent time wandering around her small city. Every day I watched the same guys playing cards on the street for high stakes. Surprisingly, the same game is played throughout China with the same rules. It is a complicated form of rummy with an almost endless number of melds. Only once did anyone show any interest in me and talk to me. No one even looked at me with any interest or curiosity. It was as if I didn’t exist. Maybe this is what happens in a culture with 1.4 billion people.
I have talked to Anna about this many times in trying to improve her conversation skills. One needs to have some curiosity about someone to have a meaningful conversation. The art of conversation involves interlocking segues. I don’t think they get it. That is their culture.
But usually, when I have needed help, people have gone out of their way. Profile those you ask – young men and most women are great. When I couldn’t navigate WeChat to pay for things, three times people paid for me and refused renumeration in cash. When I had difficulty finding a place to stay in Hohhot, a woman offered me her house. I’ve been walked to my hostel more than once. If one were to characterize helpful people, maybe they would be one of the best in the world.