What else?

The short article that you are about to read is just based on my personal observations, so its factual accuracy may be questionable. Any comments or feedbacks will be appreciated.

Cultural differences have always amazed me. One good thing about living in a cosmopolitan city is that you exposed to a variety of perspectives and cultural differences; a kind of experience that you would never gain anywhere else.

Reading books, watching movies, and traveling always helps to get a feeling of what goes on in different countries and with people with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds; but nothing substitutes actually living in a place with people with a variety of backgrounds. Once I wrote a post on how people used to be so egocentric before and how Nicolas Copernicus, Karl Marx, Charles Robert Darwin and Sigmund Freud helped us wake from this beautiful dream of egocentrism. Of course these scientific advancements have had impact on the understanding of ordinary people of the nature of our world and our selves. However, having said that, one cannot deny the fact that a majority of people still have some certain forms of egocentric attitude in some aspects of their lives.

Here I want to link this topic to the concept of “identity”; which is generally defined as what a person regards him or herself as a discrete, separate entity. More specifically I would like to refer what is called “social identity” which is “individuals’ labeling of themselves as members of particular groups (i.e., nation, social class, subculture, ethnicity, gender, etc.)”. It is clear that every one of us has a social identity comprising the aforementioned elements. This social identity for every person seems to be stable and stay more or less unchanged during time. The question now is that what happens to this deep-rooted social identity when individuals are exposed to different cultures and perspectives. The first reaction in most of the cases is what is called “culture shock”; the sense of confusion and anxiety accompanying being exposed to a different culture. This of course is not the most wonderful feeling to have! so the person experiencing culture shock seeks to find a way to eliminate it.

The most egocentric (and conservative) attitude makes one resist any change that appears to be a threat to the integrity of what is perceived as the social identity. Hanging out only with those people who belong to the same nationality or ethnicity, not acknowledging the cultural differences, and developing ultra-patriotic or chauvinistic viewpoints are the most natural responses in people with such attitudes.

On the other side of the spectrum, some individuals who has not have the chance to develop a mature social identity (mostly because they are too young to do so) tend to gradually absorb the new cultural elements and blend in the new society. How successful they are seems to be directly related to the tolerance and the capacity of the host society to accept new people regardless of their ethnicity backgrounds (Canada is the best example).

In the middle of our spectrum, are those persons who on the one hand has less egocentric attitude and are really eager to absorb the new values and cultural elements, but they have much trouble in doing so because of the already established sense of identity, as well as characteristics and habits that seem to die hard! These individuals (as well as those in the second group who live in the non-tolerant communities) are among those who are highly prone to experience “identity confusion”.