Job Discussion Forums

[scot47]

For a different viewpoint have a look at the thread over on UAE "UAE Info".

An insight into just how blinkered some people can be !

[guest of Japan]

I can't quite quantify how blinkered. What system of measurement is the level of blinkeredness in? Please don't tell me in stones or Latin because I'm not that global minded yet.

[nighthawk]

Roger, you sound like the sort of guy I�d like to have coffee with and talk about literature and the like. It�s nice to know there are still people who value imagination and ideals. I still don�t totally understand what you�re getting at though.

Roger said:

[scot47]

Blinkered ? Measurement thereof ?
Sometimes I think we get the guys in EFL who wanted to join the Marines but failed the intelligence test.

[Roger]

Nighthawk,
shouldn't you have asked Capergirl what she meant by "Westerners" and "through Western eyes"? Do you agree that by her extgrapolation from a discussion on a Canadian website she is entitled to lump all Westerners together and claim they are ignorant and biased against non-Westerners? I think her sin was to oversimplify and overgeneralise. This discussion proves this as so many rally around her in condemning a perceived Western superiority attitude.
But as some of us have tried to put across, this is not a Western-only problem. It is the problem of undereducated people the world over. And, knowing the educational deficiencies of some developing nations, I dare say this is a greater problem in Asia and Ibero-Americathan it is in the West. This is at least evident to many of us who live in China, where students have a strong tendency to "know the West" through their biased national textbooks. For example, any Chinese will tell you how "dangerous" it is to live in the USA, attributing this insecurity to "Western individualism". So, what justifies this Chinese overgeneralisation of an American phenomenon to claim it is a "Western" disease?
I do not know why you assume that 'spiritual' culture refers to religion only. To many, it does, but to me, it does not stop there. Anyway, it is a higher level of culture to which a minority has access, usually those who have enough time to spend speculating and thinking about things that do not obey the laws of physics. In nominally-atheist China, the central government has for the past ten years been trying to instill in people values of "spiritual civilisation". The communists, after decades of ruthless campaigning against 'superstitions" have come to realise that the Chinese masses are hungering for something more lofty, less tangible than material worship, yet they are terribly afraid their flock might go astray again by following cults and 'foreign' religions. It is not priestmen, pastors and preachers that guide the nation, but the political leaders and Party apparatchiks.
Now contrast this with the religious zealots in Pakistan, the deep-rooted Catholicism in the Philippines (and Islam) or the many local creeds in India, and I am sure you understand what I meant.
In China, it is the national leadership that has supreme control over people's minds. In the Philippines, it is bishops and cardinals and imams that share power with the political elite. DItto for India and Pakistan.
I do not know how Indians or Pakistanis view themselves, but of Chinese it is well-known that they emigrate to countries whose natives they go on considering "aliens". Chinese never are "foreigners" no matter where in the world they are - it is always the others that are foreigners.
Personally, I think my presence here is a statement of my choice of China as a viable habitat; my Chinese opposite numbers often misunderstand my motives, some saying they would rather stay in the country where I come from (because it is perceived to be a safe and wealthy haven). Isn't that proof that their imagination is somewhat stunted? I am here because I enjoy the thrill and the action here, but I do not mean to say that I love everything Chinese.
For instance, I no longer fancy Chinese food because I had to eat too much of it. Too many canteens with their unimaginative and repetitive menus. What's wrong if I spend extra money to buy imported foodstuffs of my choice that the Chinese do not appreciate just yet? Oh, who says they are never going to eat cheese? I vividly remember the insultingly drawn faces of three of my closest Chinese friends many years ago when I presented them with a box of Swiss chocolate. "We never eat chocolate!" I was lectured undiplomatically. This to their guest from overseas!
Well, these days you are regarded as a boor if you come without the expected box of FERRERO. Perhaps because these young and easily influencable Chinese minds need their nanny governbment to tell them what they should eat and expect in gifts from a foreigner. Easy since chocolates now are being manufactured in China for CHinese too - it may be patriotic duty to consume some!

[NumberOneSon]

[scot47]

Well Saudis may be intolerant but at least my Saudi students know how to use the apostrophe.

Saudi's
or
Saudis ??????????????????????????

[RachelA_Broad]

Holy Moses Folks! Talk about a dynamic posting!
I thought I would throw in some cents of my own.
So in Kenya I was actually refreshed by the fact that no one was PC and it makes me think of what the origin of being PC truely is. In many senses it comes from needing to deal with people of many ethnicities and backgrounds and trying not to offend anyone. In some other senses it just drives me nuts that we [I] can't ask a simple demographic question at work (how come so many of the people that we deal with in the electric industry are foreign) I was curious and I nearly got my head taken off for being racist. I was just curious....wondering if a lot of our counterparties were near Mexico or tended to hire Asian people.

I am not trying to imply that the Kenyans are more prejudiced or intolerant than anyone else. They merely wore it on their sleeves when they didn't think it would interfere with their ablility to earn money from foreigners.
So here is my Kenyan-biased statement;
Kenyans would adopt lots of things and say lots of American things were good so long as it seemed to be the financially prudent thing to do (to the best of their knowledge) such as adopting "Christianity", a style of dress, and a language, but I certainly had people react in disgust (at the sight of noodles, "ew they look like worms that's awful, I could never eat that!", to divorce "why don't you all just take a second wife? Why do you need to throw away the wife and children you already have like garbage? You are nothing but serial-monagamists and that is worse that polygamy", and to pets, "that's crazy, what do those animals DO for you?").
In Kiswahili the word for "white person" which I had shouted to me from all corners of everywhere I went, litterally translated as "one who wanders aimlessly"

I kind of feel like lots of people see the logic in their own ways and like them. I personally (and I think a lot of people who enjoy travel) like putting myself in other people's shoes, seeing the logic behind another culture, and apreciating it for what it is but there are always parts of with "the way things should be" that don't serve all of the people in a society. I do think it is also important for there to be people who have come to understand the beauty of another country's ways to be able to show others why their ways can be logical. I also think that some pieces of other cultures will just never feel right...whether that is me owning property to some rural Kenyans, or denying women the right to say that they do not want to go through a wife inheritance ritual (in which they must sleep with their dead husband's brother/a professional "inheriter")

I do think it is prudent to try to "do as the Romans do" (to the extent that a person feels that they are still acting ethically in their own mind) while in Rome...
Oh man, I could go on forever, but I will let this debate rage on

[leeroy]

How about a dictionary definition: Hmm. "Tolerance"

Latin toleratus, pp. of tolerare to endure, put up with; akin to Old English tholian to bear, Latin tollere to lift up, latus carried (suppletive past participle of ferre), Greek tlEnai to bear
Date: 1531

(http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary - Merriam Webster Dictionary)

I think "tolerance" means exactly that. "to tolerate" does not imply "to like" by any stretch of the word. We are under no obligation to love everything we see in different cultures. We have the right to criticise and compare, as our Asian counterparts rightly do about us.

I tolerate most aspects of Asian culture. I actually like far less.

[NumberOneSon]

[scot47]

NumberOneSon

Well thank you for being so tolerant in accepting my corection of your defective apostrophes.

Some posters here are totally unable to accept criticicm in any form.

[Cleopatra]

numberoneson,

I'm not going to get into a pedantic argument with you about the "Saudi's". If I changed my wording to say that "Saudis and Westerners are among the least tolerant people in the world" would that satisfy you?

You seem to have a bee in your bonnet about KSA. When did you live here, and for how long?

To clear up a few points:

1 Westerners (men, at least) are in no way obliged to live in compounds. Most of them choose to do so, but they are completely free to live in 'normal' housing -with Saudi neighbours - if they so wish. A few do, but most prefer compounds so they can continue with their tolerant Western lifestyles.

2 I would say that KSA is for the most part fair to it's Western expats. (The same, disgracefully, cannot be said for expats from the Third World) In fact, many would say that Westerners are treated with kid gloves in the Kingdom. A blind eye is usually turned to them breaking minor laws. If they are arrested, they are of course subject - or should be - to Saudi law. Whether you think Saudi law is in itself fair is debatable, but that's another issue.

3. You compare KSA to China, but Chinese society and law is not as radically different from Western norms as Saudi society is. I am sure that Americans and others who break the law in China are punished accordingly. It is just that things which are 'normal' in the West are sometimes illegal in KSA, so it is obvious that there are more pitfalls for ex-pat residents.

4 If you can name all those instances where American ex-pats are treated 'unfairly' in KSA, please do so. BTW, many SAudis resident in the US feel that they are suffering a certain degree of discrimination in the US right now.


I'm sorry that the "Saudi's" you met - I'm assuming it's a great number - have been intolerant. But I'm sure in your stay in the Kingdom you must have met a fair few intolerant Westerners too. No?

[Roger]

Sad to note this debate has picked up enormously bad vibes. May I humbly submit this is due to the fact that some chose to be dismissive of "Western" culture? It's a Manichean that chooses to designate one group as the villains and the other one as the angels.
I read many years ago a lovely book by a French author, forgot the author's name, but if I remember well, the title roughly translated as "The noble savages" or something of that order. I must add that this book was written long before PC became de rigueur in the US of America, it was written maybe in the 1930's, when for example Edgar Snow reported from China (and was derided by his American compatriots as a traitor for his interviews of Mao Zedong). Now you get the general picture - it was the end of European colonialism, and many novelists were partisan fighters of a just cause - the liberation/emancipation of the "repressed" and "colonised" peoples of the world. The world watched the birth of living legends such as Lawrence of Arabia, and Harry Harrer of Nazi-fame (but a kind-hearted man in every respect!) escaped British internment into Tibet where he spent 7 years. People like Harrer and Snow, not to mention many others, have contributed to a more enlightened Western mind.
Now the West is no longer in nominal control of developing countries. From Kenya to Saudi Arabia to China and Indonesia, it is the local elite - or those who have putsched themselves to an elite position - who are calling the shots. What's happened to erstwhile India whose peace-loving Mr Ghandi impressed the world with his near-naked appearances? It is a belligerent nation, riven by conflicts both with itself and with the outside. Where has tolerance gone? I am not even talking about tolerance towards foreigners - I am talking about tolerance to between the various linguistic, ethnic and religious communities!
Former Soviet Union? Ditto! Indonesia? Amrozi trial! Zimbabwe? Oh what an epic tragedy is unfolding there now, with the former "victims of the white man's racism" using brute force to steal, plunder and expropriate from the white minority still living there. Nigeria? Women waiting to be stoned to death because they carry a child in their womb out of wedlock... tolerance? Sudan: Muslims against animists and Christians... plus thousands of Ethipian refugees, the females of whom often ending up as enslaved prostitutes in the secret brothels of Port Sudan...Zaire/Congo, Rwanda and Burundi - ethnic cleansing, mass massacres, and so on, and so forth...

I read another book, again in French, "Tristes Tropics", if I remember well by Claude Levy-Strauss, one of the world's most erudite anthropologists. "Tristes Tropics" would be translated as "Sad Tropics". hYou get the picture - living in the poorer parts of the world, the sunny ones where palm trees gently sway in a breeze, is no piece of cake. Life is dictated by daily grind, the need to find food and water and shelter, a never-ending struggle for survival. They all look so photogenic and quaint - an African kral, the ceremonies of rites of passage, a Zulu hairdo, a Vietnamese straw hat, Javanese batiks, - but those natives have very little to enjoy, and little to look forward to, and most have to submit to abusive power-hungry tyrants. Tolerance? It's enforced, and forced upon them.

I am certainly not with those who nsaid with Rudyard Kipling, "A white man's burden" in reference to underdeveloped countries. That period was marked by an unfair world order in which a handful of industrialised countries had the destiny of most of humankind in their hands, and they often used their power arbitrarily, though probably seldom as arbitrarily as their native successors do.

I just hope people can be tolerant of Asian, African and other ways - including of Western ones as well!

[scot47]

"That period was marked by an unfair world order in which a handful of industrialised countries had the destiny of most of humankind in their hands, and they often used their power arbitrarily, though probably seldom as arbitrarily as their native successors do. "

Says the previous poster. Are things so different now ? Maybe from the perspective of the PRC, they are.

Seems toi me there is still a huge divide between Rich and Poor, North and South.

[struelle]