cross cultural sensitivity (long)

[Artur F. Silva]

Hello:

sorry for my late answer.


At 11:10 12-11-2000 -0700, BJ Peters wrote:


>Lately I have been studying and facilitating groups around the topic of
>polarities. I believe in most cultures we are taught either/or thinking about
>most aspects of our lives. We grow up choosing one or the other side of a
>multitude of polarities, without recognizing that one side CANNOT exist
>without
>the other (body/mind, work/play, integration/differentiation, life/death,
>etc.). Any two true poles are interdependent.
>
>I recommend two books that deal with polarities: "Necessary Wisdom" by Charles
>Johnston, MD, takes a profound and deeply spiritual look at this issue; Barry
>Johnson, Ph.D deals with the organizational implications and offers a simple
>and practical model for managing polarities in groups in his book, "Polarity
>Management".

Thank you very much for your mail. It has a lot of interesting points. I will
comment on it, and will end with Nino post.

I think that the reason one is caught into the trap of polarities is because
at any moment we are presented with two choices; the reality has been
artificially reduced to a contradiction between two terms, normally based
upon a manichaenist vision of good versus bad. Either/or to use Nino's
terms.

I wonder if the books you recommended suggest two complementary
methods to reduce the tensions of bipolarities that I find useful.
One is to consider multi-polarities, the other is the use of "wholeness"
concepts.

You said that holding two contradictory visions in your mind at the same time
"does not comes naturally", at least for you. Not for me either. Not for the
majority of people I know. And this precisely because of the reason
you so correctly stated: it is not "natural".

That is where multipolarities and wholeness can have a play.

Please consider Black and White that Nino mentioned. If we think about
natural colours, black opposes to white in a bipolarity. But there are not
only two colours. If we add yellow, red, green, and the other colours
we get many poles. What pole contradicts any other? and why? They
don't. They make a wholeness, that is a circle of colours (like the medicine
wheel has a circle with 4 poles. 4 poles never enter in contradiction
because they can’t define a line, but only a circle (or a quadrilateral).

The same for races: to black and white one can add the other races,
and the many degrees of half-breed (mestizos), as in Brasil or Angola,
and make a whole (the large circle of humankind, like the circle in
OS, but surrounding all earth).

A last example: instead of having mind and body "simultaneously in
your had", which as you have stated is unnatural, why not adding other
dimensions? Nature, for sure; Spirit, if you so feel.

You also wrote:


>And after all is said and done, it is about how I stand on this planet, how I
>respond, what I initiate, the kind of energy I emit - that is my only
>opportunity for contribution. And I have choices about the value I want to
>add.
>As Pema Chödrön says in "When Things Fall Apart": "Every day, at the moment
>when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to practice
>peace,
>or am I going to war?'"


Being myself against war, I am happy that you, as a member of a great
country, and the unique "great potency" want to practice peace. And I
expect that all of us in developed countries want to "practice peace".

My doubt begin when I question what does it mean to "practice peace"?
Is it enough not going to war? Not sending our citizens to war? And
if  our governments decide to send people to war, or to make war to
another country, how do you "practice peace"? And, if I think globally,
desiring peace to the great circle of all human beings on earth, and not
only to myself and citizens of my country, and if companies from my country
produce and sell weapons (including mines, that have amputee
legs of million of children world wide), how shell I "practice peace" in this
situation? In a certain moment am I not obliged to give up my peaceful
principles or, in alternative, to fight for peace?

I am sure that we all would agree that Ghandi and Luther King are great figures
of the peaceful movement. But, in a moral and real sense, have they not
fight for their ideals? And even Christ, when addressing the people that
were selling in the temple, wasn't fighting? or was he entering in Dialogue?
Some kinds of things, especially if made by the ones that share our values
or faith, are so grave, that we have no remedy as to feel repugnance and
indignation. Than our mind and body press us to do something, to speak
out our passion.

If immigrants (or minority citizens) are discriminated in any country,
I expect them to "empower themselves" in fighting against it (peacefully,
if that is possible), and people of good will, from the dominant mainstream,
to support them.

And being a man of peace, I think that even war can be justified sometimes;
the American Revolution was a war; and to stop Hitler it was needed
to use defensive war against his aggressive war. Or to stop colonialism.
Or to stop slavery.

So, being peaceful myself, I think that how we practice peace depends
of a conjugation of (historical) moment and situation. Not to consider the
time
and situation, may in some cases prevent us to "practice peace"
in the correct way. In some other situations, it may conduct us to condemn
or stop others to fight for their rights. I wonder if in that case, at
least from
a moral point, we are not really "fighting against" the segregated minorities.
If we fight against the moral causes, we can very well be fighting for
injustice.

Back to Nino's post:


>  And when doing so it means acting
>against some unspoken law. It means disarming those who are trying to
>establish and exaggerate those differences.
>Two conclusions:
>1. It might be a dangerous undertaking to fight against "differentiation".
>2. It has to be done nevertheless - and even more resolutely and
>consequently.


I think, to complement what I said before, that one thing that we
can learn from Open Space is that we also can "disarm" the aggressor
and "fight against differentiation" by adding MORE differentiation (more
poles) - there are normally other "indirect stakeholders" (local authorities,
government bodies, international authorities, other minorities that had
similar problems in the past, partners of the aggressor that don't like those
methods, to give some examples) that we can call to make a more diverse
whole. Diversity is the key. In case of doubt add MORE diversity. At least,
it is what I try to do.

Best Regards

Artur


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