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JUNE/JULY The Linguist 25
Fluid, complex and dynamic
There is more interest, these days, in a different kind of
'programming of the mind'. Advances in neuroscience
are beginning to offer useful insights into the functioning
of the human brain. The greatest lesson we can take
from the political turmoil of the last couple of years is
that we are not purely rational beings; we act and react,
and judge and even vote based on highly subjective
impressions that may change from one moment to
the next.
The work of Daniel Kahnemann has highlighted how
we have different modes of thinking,
2
and many other
writers have described the range of unconscious biases
that bend and shape our cognition of the world around
us. We have a view of ourselves, but this may not be
'accurate' in any objective sense. In some ways, we
are in denial about our own human fallibility. We
overestimate our abilities, our popularity, or just how
much other people are aware of us. We underestimate
the extent to which we can be gripped by basic emotions,
such as 'fight or flight', even in innocuous situations like
business meetings. And we often assume that values
are constant and linear, when in fact they are shifting all
the time.
Instead of having fixed ideas about culture, of
desperately seeking to satisfy a need for certainty in a
volatile world, we need to regard – no, to feel culture as
something fluid and dynamic, which emerges from a
context and a reason for contact. In place of simplicity,
we need to embrace complexity.
New solutions
In the intercultural field, the emphasis has moved from
communication to values and back again. We have
been dealing with ignorance and close-mindedness
sincerely and earnestly, but not effectively, because
our solutions have only encouraged people to remain
distant from each other.
The author Ben Okri recently wrote, "Of all the
qualities, the one I most value in the citizen is not
political savvy, or high education, but awareness.
Everything else can be bought or smothered or
diverted or confused, but awareness asks questions of
the world. There are many with excellent education
who see the conditions of the world but then rationalise
them. Awareness sees them as they are."
3
This is not
merely awareness as a tool for gaining advantage over
others. As interculturalists, we need to go one step
further, encouraging a deeper consciousness of our
own identity and how we are part of a living system,
whether it be a multicultural city, a community of
practice or the entire ecology around us.
Overgeneralising and reducing
cultures to static values can be
divisive and counterproductive