The
Need to Build Bridges between cultures gets greater as the world
gets smaller
When I started to free-lance, one of the most successful entrepreneurs
that I knew advised me that, “Between an Indian and a
snake, always hit the Indian first.” Indians, as friends
and relatives told me, “Will always try to cheat you –
it’s a cultural thing.”
Ironically my first break as a writer was from an Indian, a
former Chief Executive of a local newspaper. And the first company
that appreciated me for a job well done, also turned out to
be Indian. This showed me an interesting paradox.
In “The Interconnected world,” technologies like
the Internet and trade pacts are erasing barriers. At no time
in history has the need been greater for cultures to co-operate
for mutual progress and prosperity. As our new Prime Minister
says, “We need to make friends to survive.”
But at the same time cultural gaps and misunderstandings remain
or in the case of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia they got
worse. Thankfully Singapore has avoided this. But in spite of
nearly four decades of living together and active national campaigns
cultural gaps and misunderstandings remain between communities
in Singapore. With these gaps and misunderstandings in our small
island, how can we bridge gaps in the world?
The anthropologist, Levi Strauss, believed that people would
inevitably find differences to identify themselves from each
other. People should rightfully take pride in their heritage.
I am proud of being Cantonese as much as I am Chinese and Singaporean.
But in this age of economic interdependence, it has to be more
important to get people to celebrate their similarities.
A radical move for Singapore would be to abolish classifications
by race. Physiological and linguistic difference between ethnicities
and cultures are different enough for people to be able to identify
themselves by what they’re not. Is it necessary for these
differences to be made official by the government?
Interracial marriage could also be promoted. Senator Bullworth,
summed it up, “We should all f*** each other until we’re
all the same color.” This will go a long way into eliminating
physiological and linguistic differences.” Its hard to
distrust and misunderstand a particular ethnic or cultural group
when your part of it.
On the internatinal and macro level NGO’s and government
organizations like educational institutions have been active
in trying to bridge cultural gaps. Commercial organizations
could play do something useful by organizing events that go
beyond their commercial interest.
For example Saudi Aramco will be organizing a series of seminars
and a photo exhibition in September. This won’t help the
company sell more oil or recruit workers and tourists to Saudi
Arabia. But it will let Singaporeans meet Saudi Arabs who are
not Osama Bin Laden.
It helped when people stopped seeing every German as Hitler.
It would also help if people stopped seeing every Arab as Osama
Bin Laden. It has to be encouraging that a company from the
country associated with fostering Osama Bin Laden’s vile
cultural chauvinism is taking a step to reach out to the world.
Although Singapore did not win any medals at the Olympics it
was, as a Singaporean of Chinese decent see China do so well.
As an Asian, I was glad to see Asian countries winning medals.
But as a human being I rejoice that such feelings were channeled
through sport and not war.
We are different. And we are rightfully proud of it. But we
are more similar than we are different. And what is the point
of our technologies and our economics if we persist in celebrating
and creating divisions amongst ourselves. Just as the need to
co-operate between cultures has never been greater, there has
never been a greater need to bridge differences to celebrate
our similarities. Only when we do this, can we achieve the type
of society we should live in.
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