At its core, human communication is about one individual and their relationship to other individuals, right?
To most of the modern world, at least those of us who were born and brought up in the developed world in the late 20th and early 21st century this seems an immutable truth. It’s the way things are.
But there are other ways of viewing our basic interactions with each other -- in ways that haven’t been founded in the Western, individualist way of seeing the realities of human communication.
That is to say that view we have of the way we interact with each other that dominates the modern, developed world is a view and not the view.
As some communication academics are pointing out, the individualistic model that emerged in Europe and America in the 18th century -- in the Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason – could benefit from a re-think or an upgrade that takes in other ways of seeing things.
As communication academic, the Hawaii-based Yoshitaka Miike and others have pointed out: notions of what constitutes human communication is overwhelmingly slanted towards what’s been called the Eurocentric view.
This Eurocentric mentality, they say, is grounded in the core values of rationality, liberty, self-interest, material progress and rights consciousness.
An Asiacentric view of communication on the other hand – rooted as it is in the Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist – the emphasis is more on the interdependence and intertwining that makes up our relationship with each other, our environment and, indeed, our view of reality.
Among other things Miike maintains that human communication is a process whereby we are reminding ourselves of or interdependence and interrelation between everything and that it’s a process that reduces our egocentricity.
Miike suggests that in our increasingly globalised and multicultural world, this collective and interdependent mindset can only enrich our lives.
It’s not that individuality and independence need to be suppressed, he hastens to add, but that communication can be thought of as a more integrated process and might offer an antidote to our loneliness and division.
It’s a long, long way from the individual self-based view of human communication that predominates.
And how might this change things? Perhaps the point is that how we view the way we communicate has enormous bearing on how we actually communicate.
After all, new research, new discoveries, new ways of understanding our everyday lives – through science, through literature, through sociology – directly affect the way we perceive our lives to be and, in turn, the very way we perceive and live them.
Perhaps the field of communication is no different. Perhaps if we were to re-think and expand our idea of human communication beyond just self and other it might change the way we relate to each other and our world
Comments
The conclusions you draw are interesting and there certainly a marked difference between Eastern (especially Chinese) and Western worldviews and the way they create, order and interpret experience.Howe ver you group together Tao, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism, and not only do they come from totally different historical periods and totally different societies and cultures, but they are totally different worldviews with totally different implications for communication and life.
It would be profitable, I suggest, for you to develop your new communication model by enriching it with the differences as well as the similarities you may find among the various Asian worldviews.
Hi,
Thank you for this interesting approach to cultural differences. It did however directly bring up some issues in my mind which I would like to share with you.
I don’t believe that a language creates a culture; a language is an expression of a culture. So we can use a language to “diagnose” a culture, but cannot “blame” the language for the cultural aspects. I’m sorry to disagree with Miike on the use of the term “Eurocentric”. If I am correctly interpreting the term, it may come from “European culture”. Well, the European culture is based largely on religious influence with its roots in the middle east. Some call it “Christian Jewish” , I am tempted to go back further and would like to include the Moslim and other influences like Sufi into it. A large carrier of those influences were the languages which were based on Latin and Greek. These languages DO have “symptoms” of interdependence being a structural part of their way of thinking, e.g. in the subjunctive of the French language ("Honi soit qui mal y pense"). The Greek dualistic philosopher Plato is perhaps one the best known examples of parallel way of thinking between the east and the west. Also I would like point out here a misconception about Europe as being one singular entity. It is as singular as “the America’s”; so not at all. E.g. the Germanic languages do not demonstrate the interest for interdependence in their language like the roman languages do, it is more hidden in idiomatic use. Another striking difference may be found between the US and the UK. As a joke it sometimes said that, these 2 countries are dived by the use of the same language.
Personally I think that the US, which was founded on one sheet of paper with mainly “logic based freedom items” (rationality, liberty, self-interest, material progress and rights consciousness), has developed a culture based on “metric proof” ( “In God we believe, for the rest we need hard data” ) and a use of the English language to go exactly with that. Due to the strong presence in the world of US we may tend to believe that this marks the entire western culture, but in fact this may be limited to the US culture and perhaps the term “US-Centric” would be more precise.
In fact I would disagree even more with Miike that (quote)“this mentality, they say, is grounded in the core values of rationality, liberty, self-interest, material progress and rights consciousness.” The west has developed its social awareness with the help of its religious heritage more towards compassion than the eastern parts of the world. Also I believe that Buddhism as such blends in so beautifully into the western cultures BECAUSE of the cultural aspects already present. Nevertheless, I do believe that we may be facing a communication revolution, because Buddhism is teaching us to listen instead of talking. This fundamental aspect of altruism has always been suppressed by traditional powers (religious as well as governmental), also in the west.
best regards
Francois
(PS: I hope the picture is ok, otherwise feel free to remove it!)
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