Linkage For Life About Jack

•  Last 4 years in China teaching English, business & culture courses (international marketing, intercultural business communication, U.S. culture) in universities.

•  12 years before this, worked in Australia (also American & Canadian – has 3 citizenships) developed & presented various adult education courses.

•  Before teaching, inventor & entrepreneur starting up his own businesses, husband & father, writer of poetry & prose.

•  Long time interest in Eastern Culture, China: Kongzi/Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism – Yi Ching, Poetry – Du Fu, Li Bai

Linkage For Life “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” •  A “caveat” or “beware” •  Concerning my topic of “Cultural-

Civilizational Differences” •  “Amateur” not a “professional” – my

“confessional” •  The etymology of the word amateur from

Latin word for “heart” amor •  A person who does something for love of it

rather than for money •  No “career” – more a “careen”! •  Multi/X-Undisciplined! Roam the world of

ideas without borders – passport=passion

Linkage For Life Jack’s X-Brain & Cultural Model •  Analogy-metaphor of Human Brain & its functional-

structural, lateralization-dominance features •  Applied to X-Cultural Differences West & East •  These differences as evolution of Human Species – its

adventure – the X-fertilization of cultural opposites •  Comparative Dualities (compete & complete)

–  West vs. East –  Left Brain vs. Right Brain –  Male vs. Female –  Reason vs. Feeling –  Science vs. Art –  Devil vs. Dragon –  Cure vs. Care

Ending with Future vision of best of West & East linked

Linkage For Life

Learning For & From Yourself

“You learn much that can never be taught.”

•  Educate etymologically means “to draw out of”…not to “put into”.

•  Socrates never claimed to be a teacher. He saw his role as a “midwife” that could help bring to birth the “Good” that was waiting to be born inside of everyone.

Linkage For Life

Learning For Yourself

"In ancient times, men learned with a view to their own improvement. Nowadays, men learn with a view to the approval of others.“ Kongzi

Linkage For Life What Is Self-Knowledge & Why Is It Important?

“The most difficult thing to know is yourself” Thales of Miletus

•  "What the superior man seeks, is in himself. What the mean man seeks, is in others.” Kongzi

Perhaps the essence of our evolution as human beings is to keep answering, on deeper and deeper levels, the basic question:"Who am I." Thus, we define ourselves…learning to take more and more responsibility for our existence and well-being. – Nathaniel Brandon

Linkage For Life XIN – Chinese Heart and Mind EQ 1,000s of Years Before the West

•  The separation of heart and mind is un-Chinese

•  Xin, in ancient times, meant both heart and mind

•  The heart as feeling into the other emphasized by Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi (1130-1200)

Thus, the Chinese since ancient times have included Emotional Intelligence (EQ) with Rational Intelligence (IQ).

Linkage For Life Linkage Theory of Maturity

“This linkage theory of maturity sees man as a creature who lives by and through relationships; who becomes himself through linkages with the non-self. Growing up means growing into—growing into a complex set of social relationships: linkages of affection, sympathy, shared work, shared beliefs, shared memories, good will toward fellow humans.” O.A. Overstreet

Linkage For Life Challenges for Today’s Students & Early Careerists

•  Highly competitive first job market with need to stand out from the “crowd” with attitudes & skills employers want

•  Little “Soft Skills” – self-knowledge, interpersonal & learning skills taught in today’s university

•  Low self-confidence in many Chinese young adults with parents & society often making their decisions for them

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  Confucius (Kongzi)

Linkage For Life Discover the “YOUniqueYou” Graduate from Your Own Youniversity

•  Discover & create your “YOUniqueness” to “stand out” from the crowd & succeed in the highly competitive global workplace. “You may not be

able to leave the world a better place, but you can leave it as a better person.”

Linkage For Life

Awareness of Your Unawareness

Socrates seems to have often stated that his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance.

Self-knowledge is about learning that you do NOT know something– & then learning it if important.

“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to acknowledge that you do not know it--this is knowledge.” Kongzi

Linkage For Life Noticing What We Have Never Noticed Before

Now, to start us off, an experiment. Clasp your hands together –

interlock your fingers. Now, notice which thumb is on top

of the other – is it your left or right thumb on top?

Now, do the opposite, put the other THUMB on top & interlock differently.

Linkage For Life Noticing What We Have Never Noticed Before

Now, think about how you put your pants on in the morning. Do you put your left leg into the pant first or your right leg?

You may have to move your leg to experiment.

The point is, most of you are not aware which leg you put first into your leg.

Linkage For Life

CULTURAL COMPETENCY Remember –

most of what you learned as your culture was not taught to you – but you learned it without awareness

COMPETENT NOT COMPETENT C O N S C I O U S

3 - Conscious Competence • Theoretically understand own & other cultures • Get “hands on” experience of other cultures & can see your own through cultural Other’s eyes.

2 - Conscious Incompetence • Aware of ethnocentrism as learn about culture •  Learning own & other cultures results in better intercultural relationships, higher grades, faster climb of career ladder

NOT C O N S C I O U S

4 - Unconscious Competence • Live long enough in another culture to feel at “home” • When return to home culture feel “reverse culture shock” since you have adapted so well to host culture

1 - Unconscious Incompetence • Not aware of your “ethnocentrism” – how your culture has formed you • Might refuse to admit you are culturally “biased” • Your culture is best & no arguments!

Linkage For Life Seeing Things Differently

Linkage For Life

WEST LEFT BRAIN

MALE REASON SCIENCE

DEVIL CURE

• Analytic • Field Independent

• Individual • Internal Control

EAST RIGHT BRAIN

FEMALE FEELING

ART DRAGON

CARE • Holistic

• Field Dependent • Collective

• External Control

DOMINANT

X Eyes Ears

Compete Complete

X Hands Feet

Linkage For Life LEFT BRAIN • Abstract classes • Logic

• Past/now • Verbal • Linear

• Rational • Quantify

• Write, talk • Step by step

• Planned • Motor control

• Details

RIGHT BRAIN • Concrete

relationships • Intuition

• Now/future • Non-verbal

• Cyclical • Non-rational

• Qualify • Draw, touch • All at once

• Spontaneous • Music

• Big picture

Brain of Right Handed Person, Dominant Left Hemisphere

Linkage For Life

BRAIN DOMINANCE (Lateralization) •  Lateralization refers to development of lateral dominance (right or left eye, ear, hand, leg) and development of specialised centres and functions in the left and right brain hemispheres. •  The right side of the body sends messages to and is controlled by the left side of the brain, and the left side of the body by the right side of the brain.

Linkage For Life

BRAIN DOMINANCE (Lateralization)

•  Hemisphere “dominance” does not mean that one side of the brain controls the other side.

•  Rather, a person’s dominant hemisphere is the one in which the brain’s language processes and the motor capacities that facilitate speech reside.

Linkage For Life BRAIN DOMINANCE

Unilateral Cerebral Dominance •  "Most people develop

unilateral cerebral dominance - that is their dominant eye, ear, hand and leg are on the same side of the body."

•  Test yourself now: check your eyes & ears to see which, if either, is stronger; think about which foot you kick with or put in your pants 1st.

Linkage For Life

BRAIN CROSS-DOMINANCE

•  Approximately 20% of the population has mixed dominance or other irregularities in the development of dominance.

•  Immaturities and irregularities in lateralization can cause perceptual & cognitive problems in all areas of life – stuttering, dyslexia, body clumsiness, etc.

•  Just as X-Brain Dominance can make for difficulties in learning it also appears to make the person more creative and open to doing things differently.

Linkage For Life X-Dominance & X-Cultures Liability or Opportunity?

•  Trying to live with two very different cultures, West and East, in one person is the equivalent to have X-Dominance in your brain-body connections.

•  I speculate we have a new sub-species of humanity on its way: a “World Citizen”.

•  This person will be capable of connecting both Left & Right Brains, both West & East cultures, both Scientific Cure & Artful Care.

Linkage For Life Between the Devil & the Dragon EAST Dragon •  Nature outside

uncontrolled = nature inside controlled by outside Central Authority

•  Scarcity creates family as survival unit

•  Emperor replaced by State •  Dragon is a human

pretending to be an animal

WEST Devil •  Nature outside controlled =

individual freed from authority & nature inside as beast/Id

•  Abundance breeds isolated individuals in Welfare State playpen/prison/mental hospital

•  Priest replaced by psychiatrist, policeman, politician

•  Devil is an animal pretending to be human

Linkage For Life West=Male vs. East=Female from Amaury deRiencourt’s Sex and Power in History

•  Paleolithic males worshipped womanhood (Mother Earth). At some point, men gradually substituted a male god with a collapse of the cylical female cults.

•  The male concept of linear history arose culminating in the Greek rational thought which broke away from magic thought processes. The Greeks gave greater value to culture than to nature, to the abstract Idea than to concrete Life itself.

•  Greek society's psychological degradation of the female principle was unknown in Eastern civilizations where a somewhat harmonious balance was obtained.

Linkage For Life Reason-Death vs Life-Emotion

from Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West •  "Scientific worlds are superficial worlds, practical,

soulless...Life is no longer to be lived as something self evident...but to be treated as a problem, judged by 'utilitarian' or 'rational' criteria.

•  Culture-men [peasants] live unconsciously, Civilisation-men [urban dwellers] consciously. Intelligence is the replacement of unconscious living by exercise in thought, masterly, but bloodless...thus the sterility of civilised man.

•  The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live.” •  REMEMBER: The West has been “under-populated”

since the 1960s! Couples have careers not babies!

Linkage For Life West=Science & East=Art

WEST as Science •  What Joseph Needham,

the acclaimed British scholar of Chinese science & technology called the “Big Question” – why didn’t the Chinese civilization establish the scientific method rather than the West?

EAST as Art •  Aesthetic thought

characterizes Eastern civilization. F.S.C. Northrop claimed that Eastern civilization has an “intuitive aesthetic character”. Recently, David Hall & Roger Ames made the same argument contrasting China’s “aesthetic” with the West’s “rational” order.

Linkage For Life Etymology to Explain

•  Science from the Latin Scire “to know” which comes from the Indo-European root seq- that means to “cut, separate, divide, part”

•  Keep this deep meaning in mind when we examine the cultural dimensions of Western civilization

•  Art comes from the Latin word artem, (nom. ars) "art, skill, craft," from IE *ar-ti- (cf. Skt. rtih "manner, mode);" Gk. arti "just," artios "complete“.

•  Thus art means to join, connect, link, to bring together parts to make harmonious wholes: a passable definition for the creative arts.

Linkage For Life Western Medicine: Scientific Cure vs. Eastern Medicine: Artful Care

•  Two main divisions in medicine today, historically unique due to the rise of Science in the West.

•  Define Cure as the science of knowing or objective reason – "aggressive medicine". It’s concerned with scientifically objective methods of controlling or removing physical disease or disorders to allow the person a longer quantity of life.

•  Define Care as the art of being or subjective meaning – “passive medicine” or non-curative care. It’s concerned with the person as a unique unit of meaning and tries to manage the disease to allow the person the best quality of life.

Linkage For Life No Cutting! Please!

•  "The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table." Kongzi (Confucius)

•  Konzi equated knives with acts of aggression, which went against his non-violent teachings. Some experts credit his influence with the widespread adoption of chopsticks throughout China; culture (Wen) had triumphed over the warrior lifestyle.

Linkage For Life

West=Surgery vs. East=TCM

•  Surgery was not much performed in China (you did have ancient surgeons but relatively few) until brought in from the West with its scientific medicine.

•  Traditional Chinese Medicine looks at the “whole” person – and does not “chop” him up!

Linkage For Life East = Chopsticks/Kuaizi

Linkage For Life West = Fork & Knife

Linkage For Life

Linkage For Life WEST & EAST— Cultural-Civilizational Differences

Compare & contrast •  Western European Culture-Civilization

(mainly America but including other English speaking nations); and

•  Eastern Asian Culture-Civilization (mainly China but including Korea & Japan)

Until very recently assumed that if “dig under” obvious cultural differences West & East, find we all reason & perceive the world more or less alike.

Linkage For Life “Oh, East is East, and West is West, And Never the Twain Shall Meet”?

But new research (gathered in the book The Geography of Thought (2003) by the American psychologist Richard Nisbett) shows East & West perceive and know the world in fundamentally different ways!

Linkage For Life

West – East Differences To Be Pondered

•  Patterns of attention and perception •  Basic assumptions about what the world is made of •  Beliefs about whether the environment can or should

be controlled •  Assumptions of stability vs change •  Preferred patterns of explanation for events •  Habits of organizing the world

Linkage For Life

ANALYTIC WEST vs HOLISTIC EAST

•  Analytic--Taking wholes apart to find separate causes/effects

•  Holistic—Leaving wholes be and seeking to harmonize the parts

Linkage For Life COGNITIVE-PERCEPTUAL DIFFERENCES

WEST •  Attention on objects •  Attributes of things •  Abstract classification

according to fixed rules •  individual-class

categorization (objects, properties, simplified causality and relationship)

EAST •  Attention on Context •  Processes of things •  Situational classification

according to concrete & changing relationships

•  part-whole categorization (relationships, substances, complexity)

Linkage For Life

COW

Which TWO go together? •  Chicken and Grass? •  Cow and Chicken? •  Grass and Cow?

CHICKEN

GRASS

East vs West Do They Think & Perceive Differently?

Linkage For Life Perception West & East Family or Rule Based Classifying?

Linkage For Life West=Rule Based Classifying

East=Family Based Classifying

Linkage For Life West=Eye Movements on Object

East=Eyes Movements on Context

Linkage For Life Attention to Context/Field or

Attention to Object

Linkage For Life West=Object Focused

East=Environment Focused

Linkage For Life West: Yes OR No; East: Yes AND No

Experiment compared how Asian vs Americans respond to “contrary arguments”.

•  West got more argumentative when argued against.

•  East got more accepting when argued against.

Note: the word “science” means “to cut” – East never developed science nor practiced surgery

Linkage For Life Field Independence=West Field Dependence=East

•  The Field Dependent (FD) person processes information globally, less analytical, not attentive to detail, and sees the perceptual field as a whole. This whole resists analysis or being taken apart.

•  The Field Independent (FI) person easily breaks the field down into its component parts & not influenced by the existing context – thus can make choices independent of the perceptual field.

•  FDs are more socially oriented, respond more to reward & punishment, & less able to analyze.

Linkage For Life West=Field Independence East=Field Dependence

Linkage For Life West=FI & East=FD

Linkage For Life FIELD INDEPENDENCE-DEPENDENCE

WEST- Hunting •  Field Independent •  In hunting it is either you or

the animal that will die. This gave rise to the notion of duality. Hunting is risky. One has to take charge and distinguish oneself. It favours a competitive approach. In Hunting societies, accent was on autonomy & individualism.

EAST – Farming •  Field Dependent •  In agrarian cultures it’s

important to move with the cycle of time, to be in tune with your surroundings. Suppression of individual impulses was required. Planting cultures generate notions of interrelated, interconnected people living in harmony with nature.

Linkage For Life

WEST – Individualist

•  The individual identifies primarily with himself.

•  Needs of the individual satisfied before those of the group.

•  Looking after and taking care of oneself, being self-sufficient.

•  Independence and self-reliance stressed and valued.

Eric Hoffer

Linkage For Life EAST – Collectivist

•  Identity comes from membership and role in a group such as the family or schoolmates.

•  Survival of group = well-being of the individual.

•  By considering the needs and feelings of others, one protects oneself.

•  Harmony and interdependence of group members stressed and valued.

Linkage For Life

Individualism – Hofstede’s Dimension

•  Individualism (IDV) degree the society reinforces individual or collective achievement and interpersonal relationships.

•  Measure “high” or “low”.

Linkage For Life Exercise: Collectivist or Individualist?

You and the three other people have been working on an important special project. Work is done and the four of you have been awarded a cash prize of $20,000.

•  Person A did 25% of the work. •  Person B did 40% of the work. •  Person C did 25% of the work. •  Person D did 10% of the work. How would you split up the rewards?

Linkage For Life Collectivist vs Individualist Answers

COLLECTIVIST •  Person A: $5000 •  Person B: $5000 •  Person C: $5000 •  Person D: $5000

INDIVIDUALIST •  Person A: $5000 (25%) •  Person B: $8000 (40%) •  Person C: $5000 (25%) •  Person D: $2000 (10%)

Linkage For Life West=Internal Control vs. East=External Control

Relations with Nature •  Every culture evolved an attitude

towards the nature. How we relate to our environment is linked to how we desire to have control over our own our lives.

Linkage For Life

West=Internalistic & East=Externalistic

•  Internalistic people see nature as a complex machine and machines can be controlled if you have the right expertise. They do not believe in luck or predestination – they are inner-directed. They live the way they want. Man can & must dominate nature.

•  Externalistic people have a more organic view of nature. Mankind should operate in harmony with the environment. They do not believe that they can shape their own destiny. 'Nature moves in mysterious ways', The actions of externalistic people are 'outer-directed' - adapted to external circumstances.

Linkage For Life

Internalistic or Externalistic?

A research project gave the following set of questions to groups of American and Chinese university students and asked them to choose which one (A or B) of the following two statements they most agreed with:

•  A. What happens to me is my own doing. •  B. Sometimes I feel I don’t have control over the

direction my life is taking.

Linkage For Life

West=Internalistic & East=Externalistic

•  Here was the result: •  Percentage of Americans who chose A

= 89%. Percentage of Chinese who chose A = 35% .

•  Does this result seem right to you? Which one would you choose?

Linkage For Life West=Emotion Expression vs. East=Emotion Suppression

•  In WESTERN Emotion Expressed (EE) cultures people do not object to a display of emotions.

•  It isn't considered necessary to hide feelings and to keep them inside.

•  EE cultures may interpret the less explicit signals of an ES culture as less important.

Linkage For Life West=Emotion Expression vs. East=Emotion Suppression

•  In EASTERN Emotion Suppressed (ES) culture people are taught that it is incorrect to show one's feelings overtly.

•  Doesn't mean they do not have feelings, it just means that the degree to which feeling may become manifest is limited.

•  They accept and are aware of feelings, but are in control of them.

Linkage For Life W vs. E: Learning What Feelings to Desire

•  Individualistic cultures (American) encourage their members to influence others (i.e., assert personal needs and change others’ behaviors to fit those needs) - value high arousal positive states [HAP]

•  Collectivistic cultures (China) encourage their members to adjust to others (i.e., suppress personal needs in order to accommodate others’ needs) - value low arousal positive states [LAP]

•  European American preschoolers preferred excited (vs. calm) states more (indexed by activity and smile preferences) and perceived excited (vs. calm) states as happier than Taiwanese Chinese preschoolers.

Linkage For Life West vs. East: Reading Faces Differently

•  Culture determines whether we look at the eyes or the mouth to interpret facial expressions, says new study.

•  In Japan people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth, says researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan.

•  Japanese try to suppress their emotions more than Americans do, he said.

•  Eyes are more difficult to control than the mouth, thus provide better clues about a person’s emotional state even if he or she is trying to hide it.

Linkage For Life Emotion Expression; West=Mouth vs. East=Eyes

•  Culture influences facial emotions. •  Research shows that in cultures where emotional

control is the standard, such as Japan, focus is placed on the eyes to interpret emotions.

•  Cultures where emotion is openly expressed, such as the United States, the focus is on the mouth to interpret emotion (Note: emoticons called “Smilies”)

•  American emoticons : ) and : - ) denote a happy face, whereas the emoticons :( or : - ( denote a sad face.

•  Japanese tend to use the symbol (^_^) to indicate a happy face, and (;_;) to indicate a sad face.

Linkage For Life West Big Mouths vs. East Big Eyes

Linkage For Life W vs. E in Sleeping Alone or Together

•  Almost all cultures babies sleep with an adult & older children sleep with parents or other siblings.

•  Only in industrialized Western societies such as those in North America and some parts of Europe that sleep has become a private affair.

•  Mayan mothers told how babies were put to bed in the US – shocked, highly disapproved, expressed pity for the American babies who had to sleep alone.

•  American mothers found this attachment worrisome & emotionally or psychologically unhealthy. Moved babies out of the parental room usually by six months

Linkage For Life

LEFT BRAIN WEST • Low Context (EH) • Low Power Distance (H) • High Individualism (H) • Low Long-Term Orientation (H) • Universalism (T-T) • Achievement (T-T) • Sequential (T-T) • Internal Control (T-T)

RIGHT BRAIN EAST • High Context (EH)

• High Power Distance (H)

• Low Individualism (H)

• High Long-Term Orientation (H)

• Particularism (T-T) •  Ascription (T-T) • Synchronic (T-T) • External Control

(T-T)

Geert Hostede’s (H) & Frons Trompenaars- Charles Hampden-Turner’s (T-T) & Edward Hall’s (EH) Cultural Comparison Dimensions

Linkage For Life A Whole New Mind– China’s Right Brain Opportunity

The American author Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind”

•  Agricultural Age (farmers) •  Industrial Age (factory workers) •  Information Age (knowledge workers) •  Conceptual Age (creators and empathizers) •  The fourth stage is where Pink focuses and how

businesses can be successful.

Linkage For Life

The 3 A’s of Advanced Economies

It speculates that for the advanced Western economies the shift has moved from dominance on left brain abilities to right brain abilities because of three things:

•  --Abundance •  --Asia •  --Automation

Linkage For Life 6 New Economy Areas for Competitive Edge

1.  Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense.

2.  Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument.

3.  Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).

4.  Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.

5.  Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.

6.  Meaning - Immaterial feelings and values of products.

Linkage For Life

Get a “MFA” Rather than an MBA

•  Masters of Fine Arts – its about DESIGN! •  It’s about ESTHETICS, BEAUTY, ART! •  Notice how mobile phones are becoming art objects? •  Once utility/performance is reached via the Left

Brain Science the consumer need “flips” to the Right Brain need for Art.

•  China is a “Field Dependent”, “Right Brain” culture and its culture is “right” for the times!

•  So you students out there, think about an MFA!

Linkage For Life THE END

Best of luck with your academic studies and your first career efforts!

Remember, when dealing with another

culture, it is just as important to ask: •  “What’s my head within”? As it is: •  “What’s within my head”?