Do you underestimate the Philippines?

“People underestimate the Philippines!” This comment made to me by a trainer here many years ago has resonated ever since.  Both Filipinos and expats tend to underestimate the cultural adjustments required by intercultural communication in these islands.

From the foreigner’s side, arriving in the Philippines doesn’t seem so strange.  Manila is a big city like many others, and all the signs you see are in English.  People have a bit of an accent, but their English is quite understandable, and everyone seems so friendly – you can’t imagine not fitting in here!

From the Filipino’s side, there are also some reasons to underestimate cultural difference and adjustment complexities.  Filipinos are very cosmopolitan – many have traveled or have family members scattered all over the world, and Filipinos take pride in their adaptability and cultural know-how.  And rightly so.  Manila has been a global seaport and trade center since its establishment in the 1500’s.  By 1600, observers said you could buy goods here from every country in the world.  By the 1700’s there was hardly a ship sailing in European waters without at least a few Filipino sailors on board.  Manila has been called “the world’s first global city”.

Moreover, Filipinos place a high value on hospitality, and they want a newcomer to feel comfortable and at home in their land.  Filipinos tend to believe that they can and will adapt to whatever the foreigner needs, and they don’t expect their guests to have to do any adjusting or adapting.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite enough.  There are deep cultural undercurrents and hidden springs of Philippine culture that neither the native nor the newcomer is naturally equipped to analyze.  And sometimes what we do know about cross-cultural communication, if incompletely understood, can create its own barriers to true cultural competence.

For example, a lot of people know that Western cultures tend to be more individualistic and Asian cultures are supposed to be “collectivistic”.  But what does that mean?  It doesn’t mean that all Asians “like working in groups” or that Americans always want to have their own way.  First of all, there are varying degrees of individualism found in different national and sub-national cultures.  There is not really such a thing as “Asian” or “Western” culture.

Then, it’s not a matter of “liking” to work in groups.  Rather, people in more collective cultures take their sense of personal identity from the groups they belong to.  However, this process is not automatic beyond the most basic family and clan level.  A university, employer, or urban neighborhood has to earn the newcomer’s loyalty by demonstrating loyalty to the members.  And a newcomer has to demonstrate their own trustworthiness before being considered part of the “in-group”.

One interesting feature of individualism vs. collectivism that has immediate practical implications for work teams and employers is that people at the collectivist end of the spectrum are expected to be able to find things out even if they are not explicitly stated.  Individualists, it is said, rely on the speaker to make the message clear, while collectivists rely on the listener to pick out the cues and clues from what is said to figure out what the clear message is supposed to be. This seemingly simple difference is responsible for many, perhaps most of the daily misunderstandings that can crop up between Filipino and North American colleagues.

“Why didn’t you tell me…?” is the frequent anguished cry of the foreigner who finally finds out some information that the Filipino thought was obvious to all.  “But everybody knows…” is the equally surprised and unhappy response.

Filipinos are not trying to hide information, they genuinely believe that you can pick up the “vibes” the way they are used to doing in their own environment.  It’s hard for them, especially if they have not traveled themselves, to realize how much of what they know is unstated and invisible to an outsider.

Seemingly simple differences like these actually go deep inside each one of us.  You never want to underestimate how hard it is to change the way you perceive the world you live and work in.

An Interculturalist reads the Old Testament

“Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem.  Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement; when the overwhelming scourge passes though it will not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge and in falsehood we have taken shelter”; therefore thus says the Lord God, See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: ‘One who trusts will not panic.’” Isaiah 28: 14-16

One of the most mind-bending cross-cultural courses I have ever taken was “Introduction to the Old Testament”.  They were real people, the ones who originally told and wrote down those stories.  They had reasons for recording what they did in the way that they did it.  The scanty records they have left us tell us so much and so little about their lives and what they thought was important and why.

Distant from us in space and time, they nonetheless have great influence on our lives to this day.  And, of course, our understanding of them is not helped at all by the centuries of interpretation and debate that lie between us and them.

Taking these stories seriously requires readers to suspend their own perspectives and assumptions.  We have to remember that we are reading about a world we have never known and cannot know directly.  Our cultures here and now would be just as incomprehensible to them as their cultures are to us.

That’s one of the main reasons why it’s so hard to talk about “the Bible and politics”.  Because it’s so difficult to cross the chasm of understanding between us and them and to enter imaginatively into their culture(s), we mostly take the easy way of assuming that the Bible says what we want it to say.

But politics in the Bible is about authority and resistance to authority.  They didn’t have a wide range of different types of political organization to compare with each other as we do.  They really just had personal authority – men in power – who used power well or badly. 

Prophets like Isaiah predicted the future only insofar as they told people in power that God would destroy them if they did not deal justly with the poor.  They interpreted contemporary events according to how they saw God’s covenant being fulfilled by the nation’s leaders.  Politics for them was about how well (or badly) the leadership obeyed God’s will, and if it was badly, they said so at great length.

If the stories of ancient peoples are going to tell us how to live here and now in such a way that we will be prepared to participate in a future that neither they nor we can fully imagine, we have to learn to let go of what we think we know and hear their stories with new ears.  Now there’s an intercultural challenge!

Six ways to build stability in an anxiety-inducing world

Above is a link to a piece I wrote for one of my professional writing gigs.  It's a site owned by a psychiatrist who, while he uses medications, also encourages patients to follow lifestyle and non-medication approaches to living with chronic illness.

A lot of what I write there is layperson interpretations of medical studies, but a lot of it is also more like good advice, which it turns out is a good way to brainwash yourself into following good advice.  If you keep writing that the Mediterranean diet is good, you find yourself reaching for the (more expensive) olive oil in the grocery store more often.  Anyway, the blog could be of interest for a lot of people, not just those with mental illness.

Compost pit update

Here it is, phase one of the compost pit. It took about a month to dig (not every day) and now the next job is to fill it.

The second photo shows the soil that got removed.  Some of it is topsoil that I can sift out and use in the container garden.  Some is clay subsoil that can be used to build up the edges of the pit.  I will look around for manure from grazing water buffaloes to provide nitrogen, and add all the weeds from the garden and a bit of kitchen garbage for "body".

Once it's filled, I will cover it up and dig another one next to it, then the two pits will be traded off, as one matures, the other will be getting filled.

I've read that it takes 8 years to establish a garden, and now I'm in year two, so just imagine how it will look after six more years of digging!  I already got a lot of tomatoes and some mustard greens from the garden this year, so I'm encouraged to go on.

You only need a little bit of encouragement if it's something you really want to happen.

The Gift Economy

Here's a picture of the bookkeeper at church weighing up the morning's offering.  People bring plastic bags full of rice from their own harvest, and put them in the basket.  Then the bookkeeper (not sure if that's really the right word for this job, though) measures out all the rice and then the church sells it to other members for cash that is used to run its operations.

This, it seems to me is the most basic of economic activities: the gift of one's own produce.  It's not exchange that makes an economy, it's giving.  That's the foundation of all other economic activity.

Have you ever given a loan that you were pretty sure would never be repaid?  How does it feel?  When I've done it, I've felt at first a reluctance to "loan" under those circumstances.  But when it's over and done with, it feels right.  Giving and loaning and sharing are supposed to be community-supportive activities, and ways to enhance the lives of other people.  That's what economic activity is for in the final analysis.  Enhancing life.

What can we do to restore the foundation of our economic life that has been so eroded by the demand for repayment and exchange that it is now having trouble holding us all together?

Opinions

Where did you get your political opinion?  For some of us, it just gradually grew out of the environment we grew up in.  For others, at some point (often in adolescence) there was a radical rejection of the beliefs of home and parents, and a strong need to be different.  For still others, some kind of epiphany or sudden realization came, as a result of a cross-cultural experience, a college course, a personal relationship, or some other new exposure.

But you notice, I don’t add that someone persuaded you by their careful, logical argument to change your opinion.  I think this rarely, if ever happens.  My opinion is a part of me, and it’s deeply rooted in the story I tell myself about the universe I inhabit.  Everyone’s opinion is like that – almost sacred - a part of their identity, not a superficial or readily changing whim.

Lately, however, there seems to be a widely felt sense that people arrive at their opinion by carefully considering the facts and reasonable foundations of things and develop a political position as a result.  Which leads immediately to the thought that all I have to do is reproduce the logical steps and carefully reasoned positions I followed and any reasonable person will agree with me.  And then it’s very surprising and disappointing when they don’t.  What’s wrong with these people, are they stupid?  Are they deluded?

No, they are not stupid, they just don’t agree with your reasoning.  And, if you are honest with yourself, you begin to see that before you held this opinion, you wouldn’t have agreed with your reasoning either.  The opinion comes first, roots itself in the story you have about reality, and then the rationale comes later.

I’d like to advocate for a recovery of the belief that other people’s opinions are sacred, not subject to argument.  I think we could avoid a lot of problems this way, from name-calling to “alternative facts” (which are just explanations for why I believe what I do).

If we held everyone’s opinion as sacred, we could discuss with them about facts and about proposed policy changes without requiring the fact to force the person to adopt a new opinion.  A part of any discussion of this nature would be to share the story that led you to the position you now hold (not the reasons, not the facts, but the inner conviction).

This would allow each of us to use the same facts to argue for different approaches to policy.  We can do that because we hold different values and different long-term goals for our society and community, but we can still agree on what the facts actually are and how they influence our thinking.

Here are two photos I took of the Benguet Lily, Lilium philippinenses.  These beautiful wildflowers fascinate me.  They look like they should live in a greenhouse, but they come up all by themselves each June or July on the hills all around here.  They grow by choice on the worst-looking stony soil: barren road cuts and sheer cliffs.  Grace and grit, all in one glorious package.  They make me wish that I were a more skillful photographer than I am, but I had to try, and it's hard to make them look bad, they are such amazing flowers.

If only we were all able to bring such beauty out of the stony wilderness of our lives!