Communication Between Cultures

westward. In the United States today, the value of mastering nature can be seen in the

construction of the Interstate Highway System that crisscrosses the nation, dams that

hold back the waters of large rivers, tunnels that go through mountains, bridges that

span wide bays, fertile fields that were converted from desert land, and platforms on

the sea that remove oil from thousands of feet below. In the United States, the ability

to control nature is considered normal and even right. This results in bold approaches

to overcome all obstacles and the belief that individuals should have control over their

personal environment and the opportunity to achieve any goal.

Change

Closely aligned with control of the environment is the value of change and progress.

Since the country’s inception, people have subscribed to forward-looking beliefs and

attitudes that promote progress through modernization. Various aspects of this orienta-

tion are optimism, receptivity to change, emphasis on the future rather than the past or

present, faith in an ability to control all phases of life, and confidence in the perceptual

ability of the common person. As discussed later in the chapter, many older, more tra-

ditional cultures that have witnessed the rise and fall of past civilizations and believe in

fatalism, view change and progress as detrimental, and they often have difficulty under-

standing U.S. Americans’general disregard for history and tradition:

This fundamental American belief in progress and a better future contrasts sharply with the

fatalistic (Americans are likely to use that term with a negative or critical connotation)

attitude that characterizes people from many other cultures, notably Latin American, Asian,

and Middle Eastern, where there is a pronounced reverence for the past. In those cultures

the future is considered to be in the hands of fate, God, or at least the few powerful people

or families that dominate the society. The idea that people in general can somehow shape

their own futures seems naïve, arrogant, or even sacrilegious.^15

This dichotomy in perspectives toward change can also be seen in the way that

U.S. employment patterns compare with those in some other nations. For U.S.

TABLE 6.1 Kohls’AmericanValues Comparison^14

U.S. VALUES FOREIGN COUNTERPART VALUES

Personal Control over the Environment 1 Fate

Change 2 Tradition

Time & Its Control 3 Human Interaction

Equality 4 Hierarchy/Rank/Status

Individualism/Privacy 5 Group’s Welfare

Self-Help 6 Birthright Inheritance

Competition 7 Cooperation

Future Orientation 8 Past Orientation

Action/Work Orientation 9 “Being”Orientation

Informality 10 Formality

Directness/Openness/Honesty 11 Indirectness/Ritual/“Face”

Practicality/Efficiency 12 Idealism

Materialism/Acquisitiveness 13 Spiritualism/Detachment

Source:©Cengage Learning 2013

Kohls’“The Values Americans Live By” 207

Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).