Cultural Values

Do you ever think critically about your culture? My guess is that the majority of people do not. Thinking about culture is difficult. The main problem is that culture can be such a subtle thing – it’s made up of thousands of little everyday aspects of life that we take for granted. These little details of life collectively form the lens that we see the world through. It’s kind of difficult to look at your contact lenses when they’re on your eyeballs isn’t it? That’s what trying to examine culture can be like. Probably the best way to examine your culture is to go and live in another culture. This isn’t to say that this removes all of your cultural biases (we tend to take our contacts with us), but it certainly helps (your lenses at least start to peel off around the edges).

One very important aspect of culture is its underlying values. Every culture has values, but values are often implicit rather than explicit, assumed but not necessarily stated. Not only that, but some values have greater significance than others. When moving from one culture to another you might find that both cultures have some of the same values, say for example, hospitality, gratitude, and hard work, but it is likely that these values will have differing levels of significance in each culture, so that in one, hospitality might be the supreme value, and in the other, hard work. The problem with moving to a new culture is that no one is going to tell you what their values are or in what order they place them. In fact, it is likely that they themselves have never really thought about it - they just know what they are intuitively. Values are in the cultural air we breathe. And like air, you don’t so much see them as feel them.

I once read an article about a sociological study that found that the top two American values were safety and convenience. I don’t know what the researchers’ evaluating criteria were, so I can’t really say how much weight their conclusions hold, but my guess is that they were on to something. (When you get a chance sometime, sit down and think about how much of your daily life is dictated by those two things).

After a couple of months in Australia, I certainly will not pretend to be an expert on Australian culture – we are just starting to scratch the surface of this culture. But one thing that I can tell you for sure is that convenience is not one of the top values in Australian culture. Don’t get me wrong, it is definitely one of their values, it’s just not as high on the value list as it is in America. Allow me to give you just a few examples,

Parking
In the US, virtually every public building, whether it is a store or a church or a government office, or anything else you can think of, has a large parking lot near it. Not only this, but the majority of Americans will drive up and down every lane of the parking lot until they have found the absolute closest space available. Right? Well not in Australia. Here, you better know how to parallel park in a tight spot, and you may even have to walk a couple of blocks sometimes (yes I said blocks). Apparently, Australians don’t feel the need to put large parking lots everywhere just to make it more convenient for people.

Laundry
I had no idea how big our washers and dryers were until I came here. We got the biggest washer in the store (our American values coming out) but it is still relatively small compared to the ones in the US. The dryers are even smaller, but the majority of people don’t own dryers anyway. They hang their clothes out on the clothes line (yes, just like grandma used to do). Apparently, Australians don’t feel the need to have their clothes dry in 45 minutes, come rain or shine.

Heating and Air
This one may fall more under the value of comfort than convenience, but I think those are closely related (and I find this aspect of Australia both uncomfortable and inconvenient!). In the US, unless you live in a house that was built before 1950 you probably have central heating and air. Well, as far as I know, no one has that here. Central heating and air is typically only in large public buildings like shopping malls. If someone does have a heater or an air conditioner in their house, it is usually a wall unit in one room. But our house is pretty typical in that it has neither. Even those that do have such units, typically don’t turn them on until it’s at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside (they would say this in Celsius, but I haven’t really got that down yet), where as most Americans crank that baby up as soon as it gets three or four degrees above room temperature (myself included). Here, for the most part you just dress light in the summer, open all your windows, and hope for a breeze. In the winter, you just put on some extra layers of clothes. And everyone is okay with that. As my teammate, Nicole, says, "They're just tougher than we are."

I could come up with many more examples, but this post would be too long. My point is that in being here in another culture I am able to see how much I have imbibed the values of my own culture. So every time I get mad about having to park away from the building I’m trying to get to, or I am exasperated that I have been hot all day, or I get impatient waiting for my clothes to dry on the line, I know that it is my culture telling me what is or is not normal, acceptable, etc. But it is still hard to see isn’t it? When I was telling a relative about some of these cultural differences (we’ll just call him Dad), he said, “What’s wrong with those people?” And that’s the funny thing, there is nothing wrong with them, they’re just a different culture with different values. And I am looking forward to going deeper into this culture and learning more and more about it. Because as I learn about this culture, I’m finding that I’m learning a lot about myself as well.