CULTURAL DE-CENTERING EXERCISE

by Edwin L. Young, PhD

Get inside the myriad kinds of cultures and minds and feel how history shaped them and will continue to shape them from now to the distant future.
    The next frontier after globalization is empathy (taking a cue from Robert McNamara's "The Fog of War") for peoples across the globe and increasing our understanding of them with a perspective expanded along the dimensions of depth and breadth and with a view to their evolution and destiny.
 

TRY IMAGINING THAT YOU ARE ONE OR TWO PERSONS IN EACH OF THESE 43 PICTURES

    Try to strip yourself of psychological projections of the cultural and religious assumptions and perspectives ingrained in you as a result of your socio-cultural-life history.  Of course, it is impossible to completely strip yourself of your biases.  However, if you try to take the exercise seriously and take time to put yourself 'there' in their uniquely different culture with its extensive history, their life circumstances, and the inner life of the singular person, you should find yourself having some very unusual experiences.  Comparing theirs with your own way of life and world view could even shock you. 

    If you find yourself stuck in a 'yeah' or 'boo' reaction, recognize this and back up and try again to be dispassionate and objective rather than judgmental.  Putting yourself inside the 'OTHER' and their world can be difficult and require time and self discipline.  In a sense, it may also seem like a betrayal of your own values. 

    This also requires empathizing with the other's life and situation without being consumed or overwhelmed by doing so.  This latter kind of reaction also distorts your attempt to achieve an objective assessment and understanding of the other.  Mastering the ability to take this multidimensional perspective is the essence of maturity in interpersonal relationships.  It is the beginning of being able to deal realistically and constructively with the lives and life conditions of all of the 'OTHERS' in our vast, diverse world.

Try to imagine what it would be like to be them in their unique cultural and life condition at the moment.

Try to imagine having grown up as them in their cultural and political-socio-economic situation.

Try to imagine their way-of-being-in-the-world.

Try to imagine what they might be feeling.

Try to imagine what their view of the world might be like.

Try to imagine how they might view various categories of 'others.'

    Imagine that you are their age, gender, have their life comforts and trials, and ambitions.  When you reach that point, try to imagine what might your feelings be about your status, how others see you, views of your distant future or fate, your view of the world, your philosophy of life, your accepted beliefs and values including taboos, your fears and concerns for yourself and your kin, and your feelings toward and perceptions of outsiders.  In other words, imagine that you actually are the people in the pictures. 

    Compare these aspects of the pictured people with similar aspects of your own life.  How do the differences that you are seeing between them and you make you feel? 

    Finally, try comparing the lives of the people in each of the different pictures with each other in order to try to comprehend the vast differences between the worlds in which different people live.  Does the significance of each change when seen in contrast with the others?

CLICK ON THUMBNAILS AT LEFT TO ENLARGE THE PICTURES AND CLICK TOP LEFT BACK ARROW TO RETURN

  American baby with a life of affluence to look forward to

Rural African mother and her baby girl.

American teenage girls getting ready to practice a dance routine for a high school event.

American oil rig workers in the middle of the western desert of Egypt taking pictures to send home to families.

Two Iraqi children sitting alone next to a disabled Iraqi surface to air missile

Young Israeli Jews saying it is A-OK to kill Palestinian babies during a Hanukah celebration.

Tragic Irony:  Palestinian children being educated for 'Peace' (subtitle: 'Training to Kill Israelis')

Little girl on her own at a small town Mexican fiesta on the weekend.

Queen of England after reviewing British troops marching on parade.

American Prison Inmates having a group picture made to send home to their families.

Famous Brazilian Soccer Player and his opponent.

 'Illegal' Aliens caught crossing the Texas border to work on American farms for $10 a day.

 CEO of Exxon Oil Inc., one of the world's largest corporations making nearly half a billion dollars yearly.

Abandoned South African child destined to die of disease or starvation.

A Japanese Geisha preparing for the night's work.

Young women in Indian about to go out on dates.

American college girls on Spring Break in Costa Rica.  One girl feeling the other up using her feet.

Very old Amazonian woman surviving the Chevron's decimation of her village on the Amazon.

Old and highly successful Wall Street Broker working very late at night at the office.

Just starting his career as a Wall Street Stock Broker and on a quick lunch break.

Refugees from Genocide in Africa.

Very tall Chinese man with his very short Chinese girlfriend.  What role has the physique of genders played in shaping human cultures?

Urban Chinese mother with baby daughter.

Rodin's "The Thinker".  A modern European.

Benjamin West drawing just prior to his death.  The title of his portrait was "The Noble Savage".  Just one of the victims of the US genocide of 500 Native American nations.  Was he  "The Thinker" in a race without guns?

  Sculpture entitled "Darwin's Monkey".  Who is more civilized,  Man or monkey"?  If the monkey was a genius and had the knowledge and could think, how might he regard human culture and the destiny of the planet?

Man's inhumanity to man.  He once was a cute, innocent, little baby .

American Indian Celebrating Tribal Culture in spite of the genocide of his people.

Vietnamese Buddhist Monk self-immolating as a protest against foreign occupation and its ravaging of his country.

Muslim men kissing the ground during their daily prayers.

Iraqi Orphans of war found naked and starved.

TRUE BELIEVERS?
The Different Worlds of Different 'True Believers.'  Is belief the tool of tyrants and the enemy of the human culture?

"My time to shine on Oscar night!"  A tribute to the 'American Way' or to the way of vicarious, delusional living?

US soldiers fighting for freedom of the Iraqi people.

Wounded Iraq War Vet., still believing in the supreme virtue of patriotism.

Female member of Militia and the NRA firing an automatic assault rifle while demonstrating for right to bare arms.

Balinese women dancers getting ready to entertain.

Young Eskimo female in her first year as a college student in the US; getting an education to "be somebody."

Eagles at war with themselves, symbolizing the internal conflicts in America's culture.

Are you thinking yet?

How do you rate yourself on the ability to empathize with people who are radically different from you?  Could you be what each person in a picture was, feel what they might be feeling, feel about themselves the way they do, see they world as they do, imagine having the values and beliefs that they do, imagine having the goals and ambitions that they have, and imagine regarding the outside world as they do?  What were the most difficult images to relate to?  Have you caught yourself minimizing, denying, or rationalizing about any of the thoughts or experiences provoked by these pictures as you carried out your CULTURAL DE-CENTERING EXERCISE?  Which pictures and characters were the most difficult for you in terms of empathizing with them?  Which were the most disturbing to you?  Did you feel anger or shame or any other negative emotions towards some pictures or characters?  If so, what does this say about you?  What does it say about your understanding of others on our planet?  What have you learned about yourself from this exercise?  Does this exercise make you re-evaluate anything about yourself? 

Only after you have carried out these exercises in regard to yourself, then next contemplate what is about the world in which each of these examples lives that causes them to be, make the decisions they must have made, and act the way they have acted?  Now consider what it is about our civilized world that causes we humans to act so uncivilized?  What is it that causes us to be so oblivious to a true and all inclusive nature of our own culture, when regarded without its glamorized image fashioning?  What do we, or the opinion molders, keep from being accurately known and objectively assessed?   Are we equally oblivious to the the true nature of the cultures of other nations?  If so, why do you think this is the way things are?

Can you help me broaden and deepen my own understanding of these issues?

If you feel inclined to do so, send your thoughts that resulted from having engaged in the exercise to me in an email. 

mailto: dredyoung@TheNaturalSysstemsInstitute.org.   

De-Centering Exercises was created by Edwin L. Young, PhD on 1/2001 and updated on 01/04/2010