Four thousand US dead. That's a really high price to pay to defend the indefensible. We get to reflect on our basic prejudices every time we hit a 'nice round number'. Yet, even given these opportunities, people generally are allergic to looking under the surface 'blame game' that passes the buck for this Iraq fiasco to the people in power. I thought (pardon me) that it was we who are the 'people in power.'
What is 'under the surface?' It's our culture that makes it seem as though going to war to solve disagreements is a viable option. It's our culture that makes us think that other cultures who disagree with our approach are weak and stupid. As Americans, we don't have to think about these things, we just 'know' that they're true.
You can't have read anything that I've written on the subject of understanding as a life strategy without having been exposed to social scientist and author, Geert Hofstede. The cultural approach that varies on a scale from competition to cooperation he calls the 'masculinity / femininity' scale. The US is somewhere close to the extreme on the masculinity (competition) scale. It's all about win-lose, who's the strongest, who can dominate (beat up) whom. Cowboy diplomacy? That's about it! And the rest of the Western world — who seems to have emerged from the stone age — looks at us in 'shock and awe.'
To them, our competitive culture is over the line into the obscene. We revel in and celebrate violence. It's in our art, our music, our films. Of course, to anyone reading these words who's infected by the competitive virus, my thoughts are those of a wimpy, spineless pacifist. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes no courage to be a bully. Anybody can wield a club. It takes a whole person, consisting of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength to create cooperation out of conflict.
As we all are (or should be) aware, changing a culture is all about changing our personal attitudes and behaviors within each of our social groups, one person at a time. We can't vote in a new culture or impose it from outside. What opportunities will you have today to work at cooperation instead of conflict?
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown
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4000 dead, war, conflict, cooperation, culture, understanding, masculinity, femininity, Iraq
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