An Ecology of MInd (15 page)

Dr. Pearson noted that a young woman in a pale green sweater to his left in the audience had her hand up. "Yes, you had a question?"

"I don't care what your culture is. That is just wrong no matter how you look at it," she stated angrily.

"I understand your position and your anger," replied Dr. Pearson sympathetically. "As I said though, I am not arguing in favor of this or any other
particular view, and it is one in which emotions can run very high. I understand your feelings in the matter and there are some people even within this
man's culture that would agree with you. However, there are millions of people on the planet that would agree with the man in question. Regardless of your
particular beliefs and how strongly you believe in them, other cultures may not agree. You can argue individual moralities back and forth all day between
two people of different cultures and not budge either one from their position."

"My intent is to look at the mechanisms behind the formation of beliefs and not to judge the individual results. Any judgement I make would invariably be
from my own cultural background and by definition be different than that of the culture I am judging."

"I am not in any way trying to use my examples to convince you to believe as a different culture. I am merely using them to show how thoughts and beliefs
can vary so greatly between cultures."

"You will also not agree with the thinking demonstrated in another example; a Saudi father wrapped his daughter in chains and threw her into the swimming
pool, leaving her to drown, because she had kissed a boy. He deemed it a matter of honor, and no legal charges were laid."

“In both examples, it was not merely a case of a single mentally deranged killer. The world view which both men had was fully supported by the culture and
legal systems of the countries they took place in.”

"No matter how outraged you may be or how wrong you see this as being, the people of the cultures involved, for the majority, do not agree. Individuals
within that culture may disagree, but to the culture as a whole, this was proper behavior. Individuals of one culture often find it difficult to understand
how someone from another culture can have beliefs and a way of viewing the world that differs from what they personally see as absolute essential truths.
However, people do."

“As another example, a core belief in our culture with regards to what is right and is even central to our legal system is that a person is innocent until
proven guilty. This also is not a universal law or belief. In the legal system in France and in many other countries, a person if charged is considered
guilty until proven innocent.

"When cultures mix, there is the potential for clashes because of these differences. Even within our lecture hall, you can see anger at the descriptions of
offending "different" behavior of individuals from other cultures acting in accordance with their view of the world."

"When people travel outside their own cultures, they can generate extremely strong emotions when they violate the norms of the location they are visiting.
They usually consider the laws and views of the culture they are visiting to be wrong. Viewing the world in a way that violates the cultural norms that you
were raised with is very difficult to do. As we have seen in earlier examples, the brain will use extreme emotion to defend core beliefs."

"To make matters worse, we are usually blind to the arbitrariness of our own cultural beliefs. It often takes an outside observer to notice them.
Individuals from cultures different from ours in the United States are sometimes appalled and extremely upset, by how we tend to deal with both the
homeless and the elderly. While there are individuals and groups that work to make changes, the majority of Americans are fine with the system the way it
is and don't question it. If they were not, they would act to change it.”

"Cultures are not differentiated by a single belief. Each belief is supported by other beliefs along with it in a kind of mesh of supporting beliefs and
can't normally be considered meaningfully in isolation. I am pointing out some here, but merely to highlight that major differences can exist."

"Because of this embedding of individual beliefs within a supporting mesh of other beliefs and behaviors, it is often difficult for someone within a
culture to see a specific belief as odd. They tend to blend with the whole and not be noticed by people within the culture. Again, an outside observer sees
them more clearly, but only through the distorting filter of their own culture."

"Oddities within your own culture can sometimes be noted indirectly through statistics. For example, for men in Latin America, murder is the third-leading
cause of death. Residents of the United States may feel smugly satisfied with the fact that murder is only the twenty-first leading cause of death for men
here until they learn that in Western Europe, it is the fifty-seventh cause.

The United States also leads the world in having individuals take guns to a school or other public place and opening fire to murder numerous innocent
bystanders. These are individuals with no political motivation who often commit suicide after killing several people. The resulting carnage and the
devastation to the families and loved ones of the people involved is almost universally seen, both within the United States and around the world, as
horrendous, wrong and tragic. It is, however, something that keeps happening."

"If you stop to think about it, it is obvious that something in the culture is causing these statistics, but as noted, it is probably not a single belief
or action. For example, violent movies are often blamed but the same movies are shown worldwide. Guns are blamed, but other countries, which have large
numbers of guns among its citizens don't have the same rates of this behavior. As an example, I spoke with a dentist from a Middle Eastern country that
described having to set an office policy that patients were not allowed to bring their AK47s into the treatment rooms. With the new office policy they were
required to check them at the reception desk. Even that country does not come close to the incidence of random murders in schools and public places we
experience in the United States.”

“While violent movies and a prevalence of guns are probable factors; the cause is more complex. We can note that something within our culture is causing
behavior that violates even our own moral beliefs, but identifying exactly what, is difficult."

"A person's culture is so pervasive and all encompassing with regards to their thinking that they are virtually blind to much of the specific detail of
thoughts and views that are included within it."

Dr. Pearson stopped and asked sadly, "For the young lady who disagreed with the actions against women, does this make clearer what I am trying to get
across?"

The girl did not look any happier, but she replied, "I think so. I find it upsetting and don't agree with what you described being done to those women, but
I think I see what you are trying to say about cultures."

"Good, I know it is difficult to get past the emotions sometimes. They make great defense mechanisms for the status quo of thought. Emotions are also not
necessarily wrong, even when they act as a defense mechanism."

"To continue, in addition to statistics, sometimes a comment or observation by someone outside your culture can metaphorically turn the picture upside down
long enough for you to see something in your culture you never thought to question."

“As an example, I observed an investigative news show a number of years ago. The reporter was in India, interviewing a woman from an organization that was
attempting to deal with a problem in Indian society. Most marriages there are arranged and a transfer of wealth to the groom is negotiated with the bride's
family. The issue was that in a disturbing number of cases, after the marriage, the men were making demands of the wife's family for further wealth. If
they did not receive it, they burned their wife to death in a faked cooking stove accident. This acted as a punishment to the now dead wife's family for
not meeting the husband’s demands and also freed the husband to negotiate another dowry for a new wife with some other family. This was seen as a large and
growing problem.”

“One of the leading causes of death by women in India at the time was due to burns sustained in accidents with the small cooking stoves used in most homes
in India. Many of them were actual real accidents, but far from all."

"The reporter, who was from America, asked the woman from the organization in India that was working hard to raise awareness and stop this practice, "How
could they do this to their wife, don't they love her?" The Indian woman looked at the reporter in obvious frustration and replied that he did not
understand, that romantic love was a Western concept and did not apply. The marriages were a financial arrangement. The threats to the wife's family were
simply extortion with the young women being tragic victims in an issue of greed."

"This statement by the Indian woman being interviewed intrigued me, so I did some research. Sure enough, the concept of romantic love, in the way we now
take for granted in our society, was something new that was added to Western European culture during the middle ages. It is not that love did or does not
exist. It is the idea of romance and the process of pursuing romance in courtship situations that was new. This is not a fact in many cultures of the
world. Many areas have arranged marriages, and the institution of marriage is more for financial or political reasons or as a means of continuing a family
line."

"The idea of love having a large romantic component and being the reason for marriage has become a major part of our culture. It is the theme of many
books, songs, and movies, to the point that it seems a core truth. There is no denying that love as an emotion exists and can exist between husbands and
wives or between lovers.”

“However, we have an observation from outside our culture that we have added components to change or distort our perception of what is included as part of
love and thereby distorted reality. Perhaps we should at least consider the possibility that they are correct.”

“We have divorce rates of fifty percent for first marriages and even higher for second marriages in our society. These are marriages between people that
supposedly were romantically in love. The divorce rates for arranged marriages worldwide are around six percent. This statistic will have a number of other
things that affect it besides whether the marriage was arranged. For example, what is the ability of the women to support themselves financially after a
divorce? Still, it indicates something different is going on and worth a further look."

"In our society, it has become the norm for many people to put a huge amount of emphasis on the wedding portion of the marriage process. This is really
only the social and celebratory component of the process of getting married versus the actual relationship itself."

“Whether you agree with arranged marriages or not, in arranged marriages, the purpose and nature of the relationship are normally clearly understood by
both parties. Love may grow within the relationship, but it is not a requirement. The focus is on the marriage relationship itself.”

“In Western culture, the focus for marriage is on a supposed romantic love. Often in practice, however, this seems to be more an emphasis on the ritual and
concepts of romance in courtship rather than the relationship of marriage. Once the rituals are done, the actual relationship frequently does not match the
excitement and charm of the courtship rituals, and fails. In Western culture, young women are raised with fantasies and high expectations of the wonderful
wedding they are going to have, and little thought is usually put into the marriage relationship. It is seen as something that will just fall into place if
the courtship and marriage rituals are done properly.”

"All of this suggests at least the possibility that there are some discrepancies between what society, and our culture states love and marriages are, and
what is actually observed. Again, I stress I am not arguing whether love exists, but whether our cultural perspective about what constitutes love is
skewed. While the observations I made are not enough for a decisive conclusion, it does at least raise the possibility that we are distorting reality.”

“I should also make clear that even if you decide that our cultural belief in the romance component of love and marriage is inaccurate, you can still
decide for reasons of your own to behave most of the time as if they are true. Just as I choose to believe that Santa Clause is real for some situations at
Christmas time. If certain beliefs make you and loved ones feel good and do not cause any harm, go ahead. If the beliefs seem to be causing problems in
your life, perhaps reconsider.

“We have talked about culture and society conforming to local cultural norms. What is considered acceptable in a culture also varies over time. The age it
is correct for women to marry is one example. I remember reading one account about the Governor of New France, here in North America in the area that is
now the province of Quebec in Canada. This was during the 1600s. The account referred to the Governor’s new wife arriving on the ship from France. She was
eleven.”

“I use this example because it is a bit more extreme, but even in the early United States, it was common with many women to marry at ages that today would
cause their husbands to be thrown into prison. It was the accepted cultural norm at the time but the mere thought of it today would be extremely offensive
or unthinkable to many people. So this is European and American culture, just a few hundred years ago, or less. It is the same culture base as our current
one, merely during a different time period.”

"The brain's desire for things to conform to its personal concept of normal often leads to expectations that others should do what we ourselves would not.
For example, people in our culture criticize people from foreign cultures for not adopting our culture and “fitting in." However, when individuals from our
culture go to live in other countries for reasons of work, they usually do their best to maintain the cultural norms they were raised with. They congregate
in expatriate communities, dress in the clothes of their own culture, and send their children to special private schools. Little effort is made to conform
to the local culture themselves."