Cultural misunderstandings

An outsider will need to read between the lines, very often, to work out what cultural misunderstanding are taking place, as they are rarely stated directly, but instead operate as false premises. One has to work backwards from the stated conclusions in order to conjecture how false premises might have been introduced. The cultural logic of one particular group, brought up in entirely different historical circumstances, is not the cultural logical of another. The "in-group" is not disadvantaged by a system of cultural logic that relates to their own historical circumstances, but the "out-group" member is very much disadvantaged by an approach that disregards their own particular set of historical circumstances.

So it was that I have had to find out what Westerners think of me by indirect means, through never knowing for sure which essential bit of historical information they have left out. "Their calculations seem to be wrong. But, how precisely have they gone so wrong?" This is the fundamental question of my life; the one I've learned to live with.

I learned indirectly, for instance, that it was considered by one Westerner that I could not keep friends. How was it he came to that conclusion?

Reflecting on our different historical circumstances, I came to understand that the false premises introduced on this occasion were: "Societies are basically stable. People are not profoundly uprooted. Cultures stay the same; friends remain in touch. Only those individuals who are themselves unstable do not experience life this way."

Trying to make sense of his perspective, I realised that my memoir depicts a kind of loneliness. Somehow, because I have never had a yardstick of social normality to define my life, I had neglected to mention that I lived through a period of extreme historical disruption of my culture. I had not noted down that my colonial culture had been judged to be an invalid one, such that people I had known and grown up with had fled the country, within two or three years, to all parts of the Earth.

And, somehow we had not kept in touch. Perhaps the traumatic circumstances of the leaving of one's place of birth had led to this?

More likely, it was down to youth, and the happy-go-lucky attitudes we had developed at that time, which embraced a sense of fatalism. "Everything would surely be okay. Our fates were in God's hands."

It seems my lack of connection with the culture I'd grown up in became a mark of Cain on me; a sign that I had done some wrong. But, I was not to realise I had been marked in this way, apart from indirect comments that let me know that this was so.

After all, I did not have access to Western cultural logic, and so I did not know, from personal experience, what premises were likely to be applied regarding me. They made no sense immediately, but I could maybe gauge what these might be through working backwards through the insinuations to try to find any logic.