a proper human being

Americans are terminally unique. It is the axis of our lives, our centrifugal force. Hofstede and Hall both showed that Americans rank the highest of all cultures in individualism. This is an expression of our orientation to ourselves. In fact all Western countries rank in the highest levels of individualistic scales, whereas the majority population centers of the world rank consistently more collective rather than individualistic. In Hofstede’s studies, the former Yugoslavia region of the world ranks in the very lowest regions for individualism.

Since ministry is all about communication, what factors does individualism bring to the communication quotient?

Individualists value:
Being Unique
Expressing one’s self
Avoiding social obligations
Realizing internal potential
Promoting one’s own goals
Being direct: “say what you think”
Facing and resolving conflicts openly

Collectivist value:
Belonging, fitting in
Occupying one’s proper place
Sustaining social obligations
Acting appropriately
Promoting other’s goals
Being indirect: “read other’s minds”
Keeping conflicts hidden, resolve indirectly

(You can find such charts in Hall, Hofstede texts as well as others)

With a bit of imagination, you could quickly see a 1000 ways this cultural phenomenon affects communication every day. (Just imagine a loud brash short term team from America on the town square in a village in Macedonia!) I could write on this subject indefinitely and so I won’t since both of us have other tasks that must be completed today. But suffice it to say that since individualists have so few intimate relationships, they almost always use direct forms of communication. That is to say that we do not generally have relationships that are intimate enough to utilize indirect forms of communication. I have found that many times I need to coach those from the West that what “Mr. Popovski” said, they did not really mean, because the question you asked was direct and there is no possible way for a collective culture to deflect a direct question. Thus they “lie”. Not really, but that is the typical understanding of Westerners. They did not lie, they just had to agree with you since you put them in a culturally impossible situation. It works much like “saving face” does in Asian cultures.

There is another element to individualistic culture that drives wedges into our presence and communication here. The terminal uniqueness of Americans, where successes are pinned up like taxidermy, failures are felt like cerebral hemorrhages, and people who talk about being “real” all the time, seem to be disguising immense falsity. They are caught up in a never-ending quest for something real. But the “real” is impossibly elusive and impossible to catch. And so we see group after group of people come through, chasing one experience after another experience trying to find something “real”. When you hear their testimonies, it is beyond frightening, because many of these testimonies detail the destruction they were doing to their lives. It is self-annihilation disguised as fine art.

Lest you think this a missionary challenge, remember how global our world is rapidly becoming, and this includes your neighborhood. Don’t let your ministry and communication become yet another shipwreck that happens because communication lines get crossed and misunderstandings blow up and out of proportion. To be a proper human being means one thing if you are in an individualistic culture, and quite something else if you are in a collective culture. Lord help me to be a proper human being for where I am today.