Cultural or Personal?

I am an inveterate watcher of things—be they nature, animals, or people. Furthermore, being a hermit, I lean towards the introverted end of the personality spectrum, so I’m more likely to watch people than join in their activities. Becoming a fly on the wall comes naturally to me. I’m also easily drawn to sitting at length and watching some intriguing activity of a bug or other critter.

This propensity to become immersed in watching often draws me deeply into an activity or event that I come upon. Hmmmm, what’s going on here? What is that creature doing? Why does he do it that way? I wonder what will happen next. My curiosity gets piqued. My imagination can go on a binge. It’s fun.

When I observe humans, I often find myself speculating whether the behavior I see stems from a cultural or from a personal attribute. General behaviors often originate from one’s culture. For example, people in the Middle East are warmly hospitable to visitors. People in Latin America highly value family connections. I have enjoyed traveling to other countries and watching the novel (to me) practices and traditions of diverse people—especially those surrounding food and holiday happenings.

From within my own culture I become very familiar with my people’s common (i.e., cultural) behaviors. In fact, the customs of our own culture can become quite invisible to us. (For example, I didn’t particularly notice how the typical American dresses until I once spent a month in fashionable northern Italy and returned home, to get jolted by the appearance of relatively casual-to-sloppy looking Americans.) Being familiar with my own culture, when I see one of my people acting uniquely or differently, I can guess that it’s probably a personal thing. That guy over there just did something unusual; it must be an individual eccentricity of his. Hmmmm, I wonder why he did that. What in his background may have led to that? Maybe I’ll strike up a conversation and see if I can find out.

But when I’m in a foreign culture and I observe someone doing something that appears unusual, I have little idea whether it’s a cultural or a personal thing. I’m fascinated. The mystery draws me in. There’s so much to learn about these folks.

Of course, one needs to be cautious and not jump to conclusions about these novel observations, since stereotyping can arise when I decide that what I see is a cultural thing, when in fact it may be personal. I don’t want to conclude, for example, that all Russians are well mannered, just because I saw one behave politely; or that all Californians are child abusers, just because I saw one slap his kid.