Babel a Guide to the East-West Encounter Ofer Grosbard
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BABEL A GUIDE TO THE EAST-WEST ENCOUNTER OFER GROSBARD BABEL A GUIDE TO THE EAST-WEST ENCOUNTER OFER GROSBARD BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV PUBLISHERS Translated from the Hebrew by Ian Dreyer Ofer Grosbard Babel A Guide to the East-West Encounter Distributed by the Bialik Institute www.bialik-publishing.co.il ISBN 978-965-536-109-4 [Hebrew version] Copyright ??? To us all CONTENTS Foreword Introduction The Eastern-thinking paradigm – Four principles for a successful encounter with a person whose thinking vector is outwardly directed () Respect Identification Authoritativeness Social skills The Western-thinking paradigm – Four principles for a successful encounter with a person whose thinking vector is inwardly directed () Admiration Empathy Assertiveness Critical thinking Further reading list References Appendix 1: Thinking-vector questionnaire Calculating the thinking vector How was the thinking-vector questionnaire constructed? Explanation of the items in the thinking-vector questionnaire Appendix 2: FAQs Index Foreword Babel – A Guide to the East-West Encounter is the fourth and probably last volume in the Cultural Code series. The series began in 2007 with the publication of Deciphering the Cultural Code, the first attempt of its kind to understand in depth the characteristics of intercultural thinking and to formulate the foundations of traditional-collectivist and modern-individualistic thinking down to the level of the individual word, while examining the ability to "translate" from one cultural language to another. The same year, Dialogue – 123 Therapeutic Tales from Traditional Society and their Resolution was published. This book examined the cultural issue, this time at the macro level, and presented an intercultural dialogue aimed at bridging the perceptual gaps between cultures with regard to child raising. The third volume in the series, The Quran for Educating the Child, was published in 2008 and was one of the projects chosen to represent Israel at that year's President's Conference. This book deviated from previous books in its exclusive focus on the Quran, constructing a bridge for Muslims between tradition and modernity. Henceforth parents and teachers could use the Holy Quran to respond to contemporary educational questions. The present book, Babel – A Guide to the East-West Encounter, concludes the series. I feel that all the pieces of the puzzle are now in place. I have defined—with certain changes from the first volume—four pairs of principles that constitute the foundation for traditional-collectivist thinking, which in this book is referred to as Eastern, and modern-individualistic thinking, which is called Western. The changes are a result of my own professional maturing process during the many years I worked on this material. The foundations presented here and the way they are organized seem to me to be more focused and comprehensive than previously, as I explain in the introduction. The four pairs of foundation blocks each represent the Western and Eastern thinking paradigms. The change from the modality of traditional-collectivist thinking to the Eastern paradigm, and from modern-individualistic to the Western paradigm, is an attempt to identify the concept that will serve the idea more precisely and appropriately. This time I have used negotiations between Americans/Israelis and the Arab world to demonstrate these two thinking paradigms. Here too I developed a precise mechanism of translating sentences from one "language" to another, based on the four principles of each thinking paradigm. I have also developed a "thinking vector" questionnaire that measures the individual's cultural-thinking characteristics, based on the understanding that thinking can be directed as a vector outward or inward, and that the direction also has intensity. These concepts are meant to emphasize that we are talking not only of an intercultural gap between the Arab world and the West, which furnishes the examples in this book, but about something more general that reflects the two central thinking modalities of our world. No less important, the book is divided into two parts. The first part teaches those with a Western thinking paradigm how to improve communication with those employing an Eastern paradigm, while the second part teaches the Easterners how to improve communication with the Westerners. While the first part of the book offers a new approach, I believe that the second part of the book enters totally virgin territory. I have not found any organized and methodical material designed to teach those using an Eastern thinking paradigm how to improve their communication with those using a Western thinking paradigm. With the East currently gaining momentum and seeking diverse ways to engage the West, this is an issue of vital importance. All the parts of the puzzle have thus fallen into place. I thank my many students in Israel and abroad who have inspired me over the years in my courses on intercultural issues, provided examples from their lives, asked probing questions and mined exciting material from the literature. I owe special thanks to my student Nizam Said, whose proficiency in Arabic combined with his intercultural sensitivity and tireless efforts contributed greatly to this book. Also to my friend and colleague, the psychoanalyst Haim Aharonson, for deepening my understanding of the psychological aspects of human nature during our shared walks and coffee meetings on the Carmel; and to my mother, who has always expressed deep interest in everything I have written. Finally, as always, heartfelt thanks to my wife Hagar and our daughters Mor and Stav, whose presence fills my life with light. Our discussions were invaluable in formulating the ideas in this book, as was their help in preparing the material for publication. Haifa, November, 2012 Preface Before starting to read this book, it is recommended that the reader complete the "thinking vector questionnaire" to discover the direction and intensity of his own "thinking vector" relative to those of the characters presented in the examples. Completion of the questionnaire after starting to read the book is liable to be biased. The questionnaire can be found in Appendix 1. Introduction The world's population may be divided into two large groups—individualistic societies and collectivist ones. The former tends to position the individual, his wishes and aspirations, at the center, while the latter puts the needs of the group and its aspirations at its core. Clearly we are referring to a collectivist-individualistic continuum, where different individuals and cultures are located at different points, and not about a dichotomy. How was this division created? To answer this we have to go back about five hundred years, to the beginning of the modern era in the West. In this new epoch, the individual gradually separated from the group to which he had belonged throughout human history, and became his own center, an individual. Now a lord unto himself, this individual was self-motivated and less subject to outside control. This process took place initially only in the West—particularly in Western Europe and North America— where about 20 percent of the world's population currently lives. The individual's separation from the group went hand in hand with far-reaching psychological and social changes. The individual's locus of control shifted from outside to inside, and many interpersonal conflicts became intrapersonal, leaving the individual to fend for himself. Introspection, ambivalence, self-awareness and inwardly directed thoughts began to develop at the expense of outward direction and interaction with the surroundings. Creativity arising from the self replaced rote learning, duplication, and dictation. In the West, modern science began to take its first great steps as the power of religion began to falter, because the individual is the ultimate authority in science, while in religion ultimate authority lies beyond the individual. Democracy too began to develop at the expense of totalitarian rule. In a democracy the individual votes freely and independently; this calls for psychological maturity in a separated individual, which is not necessarily present in totalitarian societies. If the citizen was once the servant of the ruler, the ruler has now become the servant of the citizen. It is true that creativity has always existed, and science as well. There were models of democracy in ancient Greece and elsewhere. But the growth rate of all these multiplied. Now, anyone can be creative, be a scientist, and actively participate in the new democratic order. The changes in the West in modern times, however, were far broader than these. The individual's personality structure and his way of thinking changed in an unprecedented manner, resulting in the development of significant intercultural gaps between West and East. This book is an attempt to bridge the emotional and cognitive gaps between the two. 1 To achieve our purpose, we need to order and define the terms appearing frequently in the book. Note that the examples presented here describe real events that I considered to be the clearest demonstration of the principles underlying the model. This model must be understood before we are able to position ourselves and others somewhere between the two poles of the thinking vector. The thinking vector questionnaire reveals that most of us are located closer to its center than to its extremities. The following seven pairs of concepts are synonyms for the same idea: 1. Thinking vector—A new term coined for this book, the thinking vector can be directed outward or inward according to the individual's mode of thinking. An individual who is generally more attuned to his surroundings than to himself, who activates and is activated by these surroundings, is referred to as a person with an outwardly directed thinking vector (); an individual whose main attention and energies are self-directed is referred to as a person with an inwardly directed thinking vector (). The term vector was chosen because thought, like a vector, has direction and intensity.