Beyond Feelings

CHAPTER 1 Who Are You?
specific circumstances, understandings, beliefs, and customs, all of which
limit your experience and influence your thought patterns. If you had
lived in America in colonial times, you likely would have had no objection
to the practice of barring women from serving on a jury, entering
into a legal contract, owning property, or voting. If you had lived in the
nineteenth century, you would have had no objection to young children
being denied an education and being hired out by their parents to work
sixteen hours a day, nor would you have given any thought to the special
needs of adolescence. (The concept of adolescence was not invented
until 1904.) 1
If you had been raised in the Middle East, you would stand much
closer to people you converse with than you do in America. If you had
been raised in India, you might be perfectly comfortable having your parents
choose your spouse for you. If your native language were Spanish
and your knowledge of English modest, you probably would be confused
by some English colloquialisms. James Henslin offers two amusing examples
of such confusion: Chevrolet Novas initially sold very poorly in
Mexico because no va in Spanish means “it doesn’t work”; and Perdue
chickens were regarded with a certain suspicion (or worse) because the
company’s slogan—”It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken”—
became in Spanish “It takes an aroused man to make a chicken
affectionate.” 2
People who grow up in Europe, Asia, or South America have very
different ideas of punctuality. As Daniel Goleman explains, “Five minutes
is late but permissible for a business appointment in the U.S., but
thirty minutes is normal in Arab countries. In England five to fifteen
minutes is the ‘correct’ lateness for one invited to dinner; an Italian
might come two hours late, an Ethiopian still later, a Javanese not at all,
having accepted only to prevent his host’s losing face.” 3 A different ethnic
origin would also mean different tastes in food. Instead of craving a
New York Strip steak and french fries, you might crave “raw monkey
brains” or “camel’s milk cheese patties cured in dry camel’s dung” and
washed down with “warm camel’s blood.” 4 Sociologist Ian Robertson
summed up the range of global dietary differences succinctly:
“Americans eat oysters but not snails. The French eat snails but not locusts.
The Zulus eat locusts but not fish. The Jews eat fish but not pork.
The Hindus eat pork but not beef. The Russians eat beef but not snakes.
The Chinese eat snakes but not people. The Jalé of New Guinea find
people delicious.” 5 [Note: The reference to Hindus is mistaken.]
To sum up, living in a different age or culture would make you a different
person. Even if you rebelled against the values of your time and
place, they still would represent the context of your life—in other words,
they still would influence your responses.
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