Window or Mirror?

The other day we had cross-cultural training at our office. The main intention was to orient us, the employees to a global work-place, to implant in our awareness the sensitivity required in dealing with global counterparts, to sensitize us about the different contexts and cultural experiences that shape us and the people with whom we interact and how that seeps into our inter-personal engagements, often subconsciously, both at the professional as well as at the personal level.

We were told how the way we dress, what we eat, the idioms we use in our conversations- in one word,what we mean by "culture", is only the tip of an ice-berg-a very small fraction of what culture really is. Most of it lies hidden below the surface. The religion, the politics, the geography, the history-that is the stuff culture is really made up of. Is it any wonder that the very phrase "tip of an ice-berg" hardly has a counterpart in any of the Indian languages, copious as they are in their collection of idioms and metaphors?

One interesting thing that came out of the training was that when we label and describe an alien culture, or for that matter even another person, how subconsciously we reveal more of ourselves and our culture than that of our subject. When we say "Americans are very punctual", doesn't it mean that for an average Indian punctuality is still a matter of aspiration? When an American gets startled about our extended families, isn't it that it is their notion of family that comes out? Is not all our judgements and opinions of other people a function of who we are rather than an objective statement on them?

We were shown three pictures one after another and told to see how we reacted to them. One was what looked like a call center work-place, where scores of employees were busy with their work in their boxed cubicles. The isolation and staidness of the place was more than evident. The second picture was that of an old rustic lady, in her indigenous attire, awkwardly holding a cell-phone, but totally submerged in a conversation. The third was a picture of a group of carefree urchins, with twinkling eyes and an infectious, enviable joy splashed on their face. Their dusty if not impoverished surrounding, it seems, have totally failed to have any effect on their cherubic spirit. We were asked what we made of those pictures. And interestingly, each one of us had our own take on the pictures. While the call-center office space reminded some of a night-job culture, for another it brought out a sense of alienation and boredom. To one girl the picture of the old lady was reminiscent of her old grandma, while in total contrast to someone else it was the story of diffusion of technology in rural India. The children with their innocent smiles reminded some of their own childhood and a sparked a longing to be there once again.

Curiously it was evident that the pictures represented a different story, a different meaning, evidenced a different reaction in each one of us. So the pictures that we saw, were they windows to the outside world, or were they more like mirrors, reflecting back to us our own experiences, our memories and our deepest desires?

What is true for the pictures, is it also not mostly true for the world around us?