JOURNAL ISSUE 9

2004/2005

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The dialogic principle is second. It challenges our individualistic way of thinking, it is in fact the essence of being who we are. Dialogue may be defined as “being in it together”, and this principle stresses the centrality of human relationships. It points to the fact that we become most human in the “betweenness” of relationships. This principle is both in contrast and complement with the humanness principle. Relational empathy requires time and develops when people are willing to open themselves to new meanings which emanate from the situation. It also includes ethics of caring anchored in the ethics of justice. Specific guidelines are anchored in authenticity, inclusion, confirmation, presentness, a spirit of mutual equality, and a supportive climate. Authors specifically mention the role of power, which is omnipresent yet often hidden component of all intercultural communication. Research points to the fact that the powerless understand well both their own world and the “power world”. I plan to reflect on this in the final section of this article when speaking about fanaticism.

The principle of speaking “with” and “to” instead of “for” and “about,” which usually reinforce oppression. It starts with learning, an active effort to understand oneself and another. While doing so, we are to be self-reflexive, to master good listening, to specifically educate ourselves depending on the circumstance and its context, and to engage in a dialogue of which the most tricky part is to learn when to listen and when to speak.

Bennet’s Platinum Rule and Related Principles

Bennett (1998) realized that the common golden rule of doing to others what we would like them to do to us may not work in many intercultural encounters. So, he proposed a new “platinum” rule anchored in good understanding of the different people and their culture. According to this rule we are to treat others the way they would treat themselves. This calls for a really good understanding of oneself—being at home and having a high level of comfort—then having a very good understanding of the “other,” different culture in general, as well as specifics related to a particular person and context. Some argue that there is no need to have such a specific rule. If we implement all the principles mentioned above, and a few that follow, we will be doing it in an open and flexible manner. Like any other approach, the platinum rule has a positive and a negative side. The most important positive element is the focus on the specific person from a different culture; at the same time this may be the negative one as sometimes differences among individuals belonging to the same culture may be bigger than differences across cultural boundary.

Samovar and Porter (2004) suggested that in order to become a better intercultural communicator, an individual should stay open-minded, if uncertain ask questions, avoid stereotyping, avoid power and power games, give others the benefit of doubt, don’t judge, be open and flexible, and keep smile on his/her face.

Concluding Remarks

I obtained my first training in the field of intercultural communication as a Fullbright Scholar at Michigan State University. Three structuralists—Luis Guttman, Uriel Foa, and John Jordan—opened this fascinating world for me. Overall, we are dealing with an extremely complex and multidimensional issue. For example, Guttman, Foa, Jordan and their associates defined over thirty facets of human behavior. For my masters thesis research (1970) I used a simpler version with six facets/levels: societal stereotype, societal norm, personal moral evaluation, personal hypothetical action, personal feeling, and personal action. The six levels are related to interplay between oneself and society. To know oneself and one’s culture, and to embrace it and love oneself is a good start. It is equally important to know and understand the outer world, the society, its history and power structure.

A good colleague of mine, Dr. Ben Yanoov, defined ignorance, fear and anger as the components of fanaticism (IUC Dubrovnik, SW and Spirituality, 1999). With his permission I added a few elements to the original graph (#2 Yanoov 1996, and Maglajlic’ 1999): fear is often accompanied by doubt, guilt, blame, and shame; anger comes with stress, frustration, low self esteem and “identity issues”; ignorance may be associated with no quality education, no understanding of oneself and the world. People “caught” in this web humiliate, victimize, and hate others—in the center are fanatics, usually the “nice” members of the dominant group who don’t think twice as they exercise their ignorance, arrogance, manipulation, and control designed to protect preferential treatment and benefits that come with it. What we need is quality education, one that brings (creates) good and wellbeing for all!

So often we hear that the concept of human rights is new, and that is why we have such problem promoting and implementing it. As mentioned earlier, we know very little about who we are. Last spring a student of mine brought to my attention an article by Dr. Arundhati Roy from India (2004); on p. 5, she states

“Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial sites to protect. The National Museum was second on the list. Yet the Museum was not just looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates produced the world’s first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and, yes, the world’s first democracy. King Hammurabi of Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social life of citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women, prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of social justice.”

Last May we were able to visit Turkey, another country that is connected to valley of Mesopotamia. We learned a lot from official museum and tourist guides, as well as from the ordinary people enchanted by the beauty of their country/culture and its rich history. We were fascinated by the Hattian and Hittite civilizations, which existed more than 6000 ago and were known for their reverence for peace, as well as for human rights. It took us a few days to locate a book (Akurgal, 2001) that specifically mentions this important issue: Hittites have a very special place in ancient history primarily because they coexisted peacefully for half a millennium with many different native people who spoke different languages and practiced different religions. They are most famous for establishing a state that was respectful of human rights.

Traveling around the globe with an open and inquisitive mind we can re/discover many such places and traditions. To get out of the web of myths and lies we need dialogue, humility, integrity, courage, vision, hope, respect for everyone and everything, we need to be impatiently patient, we need new shared power of knowledge, human kindness, and love. This brings us to spirituality as the essence of who we are:

“Spirituality is our inner nourishment, grace, wisdom, lifeblood. It is pure love. Our very being. Spirituality is our doing, it is how we go about digging deep to discover the shadow and light of our authentic self. Spirituality is our practice to perceive and pursue fuller aliveness. As the ground of our very being and doing … Spirituality is how we discover the gift of all gifts: our interconnectedness with a world of other complex, wild and wonderful beings … As a leader and a follower, this love … challenges me to realize my full aliveness, no more and no less than to realize yours. It is my unshakable belief in an unknown, infinite potential we share to forgive and celebrate our humanity, build our differences, and steer our passions … for the good of all” (Lakey, 2002).

My professors at Michigan State University taught me that the best way to get to know each other, re/discover common elements of human identity, observe group-related components, and learn about individual uniqueness is through the thousands-of-years-old tradition of “food and story” sharing. For several decades I have worked on developing a model anchored in this tradition, as well as in understanding, knowledge, and respect—a model that goes beyond tolerance by promoting acceptance and appreciation, and reaching towards celebration. So, we celebrate the beauty of human diversity on the BSU Campus through many different open class projects such as:

“Beauty of Human Diversity” programs that celebrate different ethnicity, age, regional uniqueness, faith traditions.
“My Time” panels that are anchored in gender, sex, and sexual orientation.
“I Have a Dream” video-panels that celebrate the legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
An MH Awareness panel that celebrates unique beauty and contributions by the people who live with deep emotional problems and/or other chronic health condition/s.

Whenever possible, students, faculty, staff and Bemidji Community members are involved in all stages of the project. For example, during the academic year 1998/99 we worked on a CD-ROM project entitled “Beauty of Human Diversity on the BSU Campus”. The continued project “Beyond and Within” presents an effort to document how we celebrate our human diversity. Since the fall of 1999, we carried out three different subprojects:

“Let’s Dance”

During the 2000 Spring Semester, fifty-five students, faculty, staff, and Bemidji community members spent Friday evenings learning dances from all over the World. During the breaks we shared different snacks and soft drinks, “spiced up” with stories and laughter. A group of students in charge of the 2000 Feast of Nations program selected a dance from Ghana, and gave us the honor of opening the FON program. For a while our dance was on the BSU web-site.

“Let’s Eat”

This was our next project, carried out during the academic year 2000/2001. With generous help and support provided by fifteen faculty, staff, and Bemidji community members, we opted to share with a limited group of students the traditions of food growing, food collecting, food preserving and preparing, as well as the table manners and unique stories often shared within a given culture. We opted for seven cultural traditions. For each of the seven traditions a minimum of a 3-course meal was prepared and served in a rather formal manner. This project quickly gained huge popularity among students. Due to its nature it was initially limited to only twenty-five students, but in the end we had forty-two students sampling the food and listening to stories related to food and other cultural traditions.

“Let’s Share a Story”

Story telling is one of the most important traditions found in all cultures of the world. This project emphasizes story-telling, combined with good snacks and soft drinks, video-material, humor and laughter, and other elements selected by the primary story-teller. Almost every week a “small” panel is staged in my Intercultural Communication class, while several times a year “big” panel is organized as an open class open to other students, faculty, staff, and the Bemidji community.

Through all of the above mentioned activities we seek for the common element and interrelatedness of our human family, while at the same time respecting group commonalities and individually unique characteristics. To people with integrity, love and education such an approach comes naturally. Others first have to deal with their identity issues, fear, and ignorance—three facets in which most of our “isms” are anchored.

References

1. Dr. A.C. Ross (Ehanamani): MITAKUYE OYASIN – “We are all related”. BAER,

N.D, 1991

2. David W. Klopf: Intercultural Encounters – The Fundamentals of Intercultural

Communication, 5th Edition, Morton Publishing Company, 2001

3. Samovar A.S., Porter R.E.: Communication Between Cultures, 5th Edition, Thompson

Wadsworth, 2004

4. Diamond Jared: Guns, Germs and Steel – A Short History of Everybody for the Last

13,000 Years, Vintage, 1998

5. Fred A. Jandt: An Introduction to Intercultural Communication, 4th Ed., SAGE 2004

6. Martin Judith, Nakayama Thomas: Experiencing Intercultural Communication,

Mayfield Publishing Company, 2001

7. Martin J.N., Nakayama T.K.: Intercultural Communication in Contexts, Mayfield

Publishing Company, 1997

8. Bradford ‘J’ Hall: Among Cultures – The Challenge of Communication, Harcourt

College Publishers, 2002

9. Bennett, M.: “Overcoming the Golden Rule: Sympathy and Empathy”, in M.J.

Bennett, Ed: Concepts of Intercultural Communication: Selected Readings,

Intercultural Press, 1998

10. Arundhati Roy: Instant-Mix Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free), Common Dreams

NewsCenter 2004 (www.commondreams.org)

11. Ekrem Akurgal: The Hattitian and Hittite Civilization, Republic of Turkey, Ministry

of Culture Art Series 329, November 2001

12. Melinda K. Lakey: Defining Spirituality, Kellog Foundation, N.Y. 2002

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