Posted on 09/12/2013 7:47:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A world traveler who speaks ten languages, British linguist Richard Lewis decided he was qualified to plot the world's cultures on a chart.
Many people think he nailed it, as his book "When Cultures Collide," now in its third edition, has sold more than one million copies since it was first published in 1996 and was called "an authoritative roadmap to navigating the world's economy," by the Wall Street Journal.
Lewis plots countries in relation to three categories:
Linear-actives—those who plan, schedule, organize, pursue action chains, do one thing at a time. Germans and Swiss are in this group.
Multi-actives—those lively, loquacious peoples who do many things at once, planning their priorities not according to a time schedule, but according to the relative thrill or importance that each appointment brings with it. Italians, Latin Americans and Arabs are members of this group.
Reactives—those cultures that prioritize courtesy and respect, listening quietly and calmly to their interlocutors and reacting carefully to the other side's proposals. Chinese, Japanese and Finns are in this group.
He says that this categorization of national norms does not change significantly over time:
The behavior of people of different cultures is not something willy-nilly. There exist clear trends, sequences and traditions. Reactions of Americans, Europeans, and Asians alike can be forecasted, usually justified and in the majority of cases managed. Even in countries where political and economic change is currently rapid or sweeping (Russia, China, Hungary, Poland, Korea, Malaysia, etc.) deeply rooted attitudes and beliefs will resist a sudden transformation of values when pressured by reformists, governments or multinational conglomerates.
Here's the chart that explains the world:
Some more details on the categories:
The point of all of this analysis is to understand how to interact with people from different cultures.....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
As you say...
This is very interesting as it seems like it could fit in with the tri nature of the Godhead. God created man in his image. Might this explain it? We have been made enough like God that we are able to relate to him (at some level).
bump for later
Correct. They fit into the very emotional side of this diagram.
I might even go so far to say “white males” are linear active.
Oh God my work place has a hard-on for DISC.
Yep. We're two different cultures inhabiting the same territory, and we seem to growing further apart, not finding a comfortable middle.
That reality portends some ugly business in our future.
I don't think it's much of a mystery. Agriculture allowed people to stay in one place long enough to build stable families, societies, cultures, economies, and to advance learning - all of which led to advances in every kind of technology.
Latins are not all the same. There are class/racial differences.
More children live with agriculture. More children live means larger populations.
Jared Diamond’s “Guns Germs and Steel” recounted a case where an agricultural people conquered a hunter-gatherer people, but the island wasn’t suited to agriculture, so they converted to hunter-gatherers.
Most Italians are descended from Germans who conquered Rome, and Normans who took over southern Italy from the Arabs.
:)
same thing with the alsace-lorraine parts of germany and france. lots of mixing of heritages there too.
Well, the Peninsula is divided generally between north and south between Celts/ Germans and Mediterranean peoples, but though the Muslims did take Sicily, and Arabic became the language, not many racial Arabs came, about the same percent as Normans did later on.
If you enjoyed this, there’s a really great chapter along the same lines in the book Outliers. It describes how cultural differences can be blamed for some airplane disasters. The pilots from more timid cultures won’t say what they mean, for fear of offending, while our American air traffic controllers assume someone running out of fuel would mention that, loudly. It’s a fun read.
Maybe we had to because there were too many people to live off wild game and wild plants.
Have to show this to my logical husband; bump for later, because happy thought became easily replaced by confused one.
Thank-you for posting this.
bmfl
Very interesting.
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