The ultimate definition of life is cultural relativism. We are all the products of the culture from which we stem. We often think ourselves unique and unsullied, but the fact of the matter is that the membership of any given culture will be far more similar than they will ever be different. What is true and right and just in our eyes, is true and right and just because we have been told as much, programmed with morality, taste, artistic expression and even love. David Anthony Hohol kicks off RELATIVTY OnLine’s cultural theme this month by taking us with him on his journeys around the globe.  

I am the son of a farmer’s son, of a farmer’s son. When I was just a boy, my little hometown of Two Hills was the whole wideworld; little did I know what fate had in store for me. With that said, most could never have foreseen the less than ordinary journey of my life that began with the beautiful simplicity of a little white farm house on Range Road 130, just northof town. I’ve spent the better part of a decade living overseas and traveling the world, every year returning to the humble and sheltering sanctuary of home. Last year, however, things were just a little bit different, as this time around I returned with my wife. She is a woman far greater than I will ever be, far more passionate, far more understanding. So much so, I sometimes wonder what Mrs. Hohol sees in me, and that’s when I realize how lucky I am to have found her. With she being born in the tiny desert nation Qatar and I arriving in our big blue world quite literally on the other side of the planet, the chances of our two souls ever crossing paths was against all odds to be sure- but found each other we did. An educated, world-traveled, professionally-employed and independent woman, whose career achievements far surpass mine, she quickly shatters the stereotype of a Middle Eastern woman from Jordan that fills many heads in my part of the world. On June 28th, 2008 family and friends gathered to celebrate our marriage and I must confess- I got quite a kick out of watching those in attendance who struggled to compare the woman before them with what had been previously downloaded onto their North American hard drives. In the end, we are all products of our environment.  

            One thing I’ve learned from my global odyssey of more than 40 countries is that, no matter what the culture, life unfolds upon a predetermined playing field, complete with a ready made set of rules and regulations. By the time we humans begin to live out our first recorded memories, the environment in which we do so is simply a part of our societal matrix and our daily empirical ballet is instinctually accepted as the definition of life itself. We entirely submit to the breadth and width of the field upon which we play, never viewing such boundaries as limitations, but simply as the allotted availability of space for the daily game of living a human life. By extension, we are all the cultural software of social conditioning, and the instillation of pre-conceived learning mechanisms drive nearly every part of our looping daily program.  From the moment we get out of bed in the morning, nearly all of our actions are manufactured. The time we wake up, whether we shower or brush our teeth, the clothes we put on, the food we eat for breakfast, and all that plays out over the course of a day is largely pre-determined. Everything, from what we do for a living to the forms of recreation we participate, in is an element of culture. The all-encompassing power a culture wields is very much responsible for how its membership behaves and judges the behavior of others, as well as the patterns of thought and the modes of communication that are used in everyday life. Thus our hopes and dreams, our fears and insecurities, our goals for the future, and how it is we go about achieving them are all products of acculturation.  

            Life, however, is changing. Today the world is smaller than it has ever been at any point in human history. Only about a hundred years ago the power of flight had yet to be mastered, satellites did not exist, and the Internet was an unfathomable science-fiction fairy tale. Life was much more isolated, fixed, and concrete compared to the communal, ever-shifting, and porous experience of today’s very accessible sphere of influence. In the massive scope of time, it was until only yesterday that an individual was born into a culture and spent a lifetime knowing little, or nothing at all, about the many other civilizations that make up our world’s diverse and colorful population. We were born, raised, married, and lived out our entire lives within the same geographic region, amidst the same people, and same values until finally passing on. In fact, many still do the same today. With that said, we now find ourselves in the midst of an extraordinary time where the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, from cultures the world over is readily available. The normative and cognitive alternatives of societies from virtually every corner of the planet are now a point and click or a plane ride away. By extension, a newly eclectic and incomprehensible form of acculturation is now at the dawn of creating a never before imaginable planetary matrix for the inhabitants of our global village. What the result will be is still unknown, but the world is evolving at a faster pace than it ever has before and quite simply, it’s an amazing time to be alive. 

            With the newly forming global village in a culturally embryonic state, our out-dated Cold War, binary conflict perspective of the human endeavor still dominates our psychological approach to that which is different. Although we ravenously ingest daily doses of information and see more and more everyday that there are indeed alternatives to the world that is our own, our collective egocentric narcissism often impedes our ability to accept and understand. The mass media, television, and film industries in every corner of this cultural war program their masses with the stereotypical images of the other, the result often being that the unknown is seen as strange, confusing, mysterious and inferior. We instinctually judge competing alternatives of life by our own standards and unfortunately, such an attitude is as human as human can be. Ethnocentrism is a term that describes the condition of judging, often in pejorative terms, other cultures according to the usually taken for granted assumptions of one’s own society. Ethnocentricity is a feeling that one’s own group has a mode of living, a set of values, and a cache of adaptation patterns that are superior to others and although not always, is at times combined with a generalized contempt for members of other groups. We are all indeed ethnocentric to varying degrees due to the inescapable fact that we are born into a culture and cling to its ethos as a safeguard against chaos and disorder. It seems we all need to know where we come from, who we are and why it is we believe. Moral psychology aside, touchstones are an important part of the human experience. 

            Perhaps, the most common expression of ethnocentricity are the belief that one’s own standard of values is universal and that the other is the only group being programmed with pre-determined information.  The unspoken and usually unrecognized assumption implicit in any kind of cross cultural analysis, is that the values and practices of the culture which the individual writer or researcher happens to belong to are objectively better, or at the very least the standard, against which others are to be judged. By extension, when we immerse ourselves in cross-cultural comparison via living within the walls of another way of life we constantly make assumptions. We are not even aware that we are being ethnocentric, as we cannot understand that we indeed cannot understand. Even when we recognize the ignorance of our own ethnocentric tendencies and genuinely attempt to be a non-partisan and open-minded agent operating within the program of a foreign culture, things are no less difficult to accept. Our social conditioning cannot be removed like a suit of clothing, as it is as much a part of our internal hardware as the blood that flows through our veins. A transfusion, however, is possible and assimilation, to varying degrees, is the result. 

       I have learned that patience, willingness, time, and simple exposure to the elements of life will always bear the fruit of freedom. In the end, the postmodern world presents us all with a rich and many-sided reflection of human totality. In a constant state of societal flux, the de-centered and shifting nature of individual perspective defines today’s global village. The borderless realm of our new world makes for some never before possible unions of thought and circumstance. Such a perspective offers an all-inclusive freedom, as identity, community, and even reality are no longer restricted by the controlling definitions of yesterday. Postmodernism critiques the controlling grand narratives of our past, which at one time, readily controlled our ideological world.  Today, things are so very different. We are now no longer simple and concrete agents, but complex figures of difference and identity. As the world becomes smaller and smaller, we become how it is we define ourselves entails an infinite number of substitutions and possibilities. Cultural analysis and the definition of identity itself can no longer focus on culture as the making of history, but on the unchosen conditions which fuel the very process of history’s production. 

           My wife and I represent two grand narratives of human history coming together in a union that woud not have been possible a century earlier. Not only do we grow and understood, more and more each day, as a result, but so do all those that come into contact with us. Our East meets West union continually challenges pre-existing narratives of our world. There my wife was, at our wedding, in a small town on the Alberta Prairies, meeting little old ladies, born and raised in a single tiny corner of the world, changing their perspectives, surprising them, inspiring growth by her very presence. What were the chances of their paths crossing? Perhaps, it may have been one in a million. I, too, have shattered the pre-conceived notions of many from my wife’s circle of family and friends. Together, we are breathing examples of the newly deconstructed postmodern world. It seems like such a grandiose label for a girl born in the desert and boy from the small town prairies. It makes one believe anything is possible; it makes one hope; it makes one dream.   

From the time of Marcos to the Home of the Brave, comes a story of a cultural transplantation; a young boy taken from an unstable homeland in the Philippnes to the tough streets of Chicago. Below we are taken on the global journey that changed Staff Writer Dr. Ron Villejo forever.

Jap. Chink.  I was 9 years old and newly arrived in Chicago.  Jap.  Chink.  Racial slurs for Japanese and Chinese, that’s what some kids at school called me.  Something to do with my squinty eyes. 

∞

America was a virtual Shangri La for a Filipino boy. The Land of Milk and Honey,   America was flowing white and brown.  I also understood the figurative meaning of the phrase.  I set about to list all the toys and clothes I wanted, because in America I could have whatever I wanted to have – heady stuff, for a little boy.  I tried to get my sisters (6 and 4 years old) and brother (5 years old) to create their own list, but they noted only a handful of things.  “You can have more, you can have more,” I urged them. 

By most accounts, we had a good life in the Philippines.  Both professionals – Mechanical Engineer and Pharmacist – my parents had a house built in Parañaque, southwest of Manila.  We lived a middle-class suburban life and accordingly, I went to the nearby well-to-do Catholic all-boys school of St. John Don Bosco.  What’s more, we had two housemaids taking care of us. 

My parents, though, had a sense of a future not looking so bright. The 1960s was the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, and they each felt that trouble was afoot.  I never knew how or when they began to plan our departure from the Philippines, but in 1968 my father’s two sisters and their families left from America in May.  We followed suit in September.  In 1972, President Marcos declared martial law.  Foresight on the part of my parents? Surely.

∞

I was a shy but playful boy on the Westside of Chicago, where there were many more Latinos than Filipinos.  An autumn cool was already in the air, and there seemed to be more cloudy days than I remembered seeing in the Philippines.  It was ideal weather for recess in the playground. 

What goes on in the playground was a microcosm of what was to come for us children.  All that made living delightful was there – the running, the climbing, and the jumping.  In fact, play was an entire language for us; the groan from exerting on the monkey bars; the screaming laughter from some sort of chase; the soft thud of falling down. No need for words, really.

Jap.  Chink.  In the playground, I soon learned to retort, “I’m gonna kick your ass!”

My older cousins taught me that, as they, too, were subjected to such slurs.  “I’m gonna kick your ass!” 

I kept saying it, until it stopped feeling awkward and stupid to say. 

∞

Life in Chicago was a far cry from our spacious home in Parañaque.  For the first few months, we were amongst three families living in a three-bedroom flat.  The three sets of parents – mine, my two aunts and their husbands – each staked out a bedroom.  We children – a total of 14 in the household, with a wide range in age – mostly slept on the living and dining room floor. 

It was fun for a while, but the cramped quarters led the cousins to fight amongst ourselves; never mind the other kids at school. 

“I’m gonna kick your ass!” 

Remarkably, it must’ve worked.  Soon thereafter, I heard Jap and Chink very little.  Shy or not, I saw clearly that there was value in being tough. 

              ∞

 Better than being tough, I found that the real ticket into social circles and the approval that comes with it was my academics.  I was a smart boy.  I came to learn that Philippine curriculum was more advanced than that of America.  There, children go from elementary school to high school – that is, from 6th grade to high school.  In America, there were 7th and 8th grades to navigate, before high school.  So, instead of 18 years old, many Filipinos are in the university at 16 years old.  So the curriculum, from early on, was geared along such a timeline.

Cool, totally cool. 

∞

I remember a boy named, Raul, a Puerto Rican.  A smallish boy – a gangbanger – he had a clutch of boys in the neighborhood.  Thankfully, I was never part of this. Curiously, he took a liking for me.  He sort of came into my circle. (Well, not really, as I had no circle.)  For instance, I’d go home for lunch after which he’d come by our apartment building and wait outside for me, so that he could walk me back to school.  Somehow, I felt safe and proud to be friends with him.

Raul wasn’t a very bright boy.  This, mixed with a troublesome nature, made him the butt of even the teacher’s awful jokes and derisions in class.  “Raul, you have no class!” 

So, there it was, I understood it.  Without his ever demanding anything of me, I helped him with his schoolwork – the stuff of friendship.  I got the protection that probably helped me stay out of trouble, in countless, unknown instances.  He got a better footing with his academics.         

Again, not much talking about it, Raul and I learned lessons for a lifetime. 

∞

 “I’m gonna kick your ass!” was so effective, yet so ineffective at the same time. 

 More than 40 years have passed, and since those fateful first months in Chicago I have very rarely been slurred upon by others.  Maybe it has to do with the toughness and confidence I’ve kept building up over years.  Maybe it has to do with the several relationships and circles I’ve chosen to put myself in.  Maybe it has to do with my smarts.  Who knows?

You see, here’s the thing.  Jap and Chink still reverberate within me.  Why?

Filipinos, by and large, don’t have very strong self-esteem.  Today we’re spread around the world, but more often than not, you’ll find us to be more deferential than assertive, more serving than commanding, more friendly than tough-ass.  Why?

For centuries, the Philippines were under colonial rule – by the Spaniards largely, but the Chinese and Americans figure prominently into this.  The northern part of the Philippines was their stronghold, and they came in when the economic and social fiber of development was still in its nascent stages.  More than just neglect to build the economic foundation of the local people, they actually dismantled it!  For example, Chinese merchants got small-time farmers to sell rice, below its value.  Then, in turn, they sold it at above this value.  

Imagine cutting off a baby’s feet, before he can even walk!

That’s what happened.  We were duly servants in our own home.  Invisible, in a similar vein as author Ralph Ellison posed the Black American.   

Yes, by the late 1800s, the ongoing stirrings of rebellion in the country led to the formation of a national identity (albeit roughshod and patchwork).  The Philippines gained its independence.

But still, why is our self-esteem generally still low, more than a hundred years later? 

My take on this:  This bit about independence is a pipe dream.  The 1900s was the era of the Americans.  Their sheep’s clothing was liberator, which hid the wolf of oppressor underneath.  More powerful than the Spaniards, I believe, the Americans entered our brain (e.g., through books and television) – and planted themselves within our tongue (i.e., through language, Filipinos became one of the best English-speaking Asians in the world). 

The Americans more or less just left, but I argue that we’re still an oppressed lot.  By whom?  By the longtime wealthy, powerful families in politics and business.  One learns not to mess around with them, because if someone does, they’ll see that corruption is the least of your worries.  One will literally put their life in danger.  My parents must’ve known this.  

I challenge any of my kababayan (fellow Filipino) to win me over with the notion that Filipinos are independent.  He or she will fail.  Today we are still under colonial rule. 

∞

Shame is a powerful social, behavioral tool in Philippine culture.  It’s a way to command obedience from children by parents and teachers – and from everyday citizens by those in power.

In fact, oddly enough, to feel shame was a sort of badge of honor amongst Filipinos.  So much so that for a child to be scolded with walang hiya (shameless) was doubly shaming! 

For a non-Filipino, this can be a maddening, twisted thing.  I’d agree.

Jap.  Chink.  This made me profoundly ashamed. 

The slur wasn’t even the fucking right nationality!  How odd and cruel can children be!  Damn it, didn’t they know I was not Japanese or Chinese.  It was as if I didn’t deserve the honor of being kicked in the gut with my own nationality.  Instead, it was like having my gut ripped out of me!  More than just invisible, I was now hollow. 

Talk about self-esteem.  Walang hiya.  Talk about shame.  How deep can you go with your nth power? 

∞

Jap.  Chink.  Oh, I can forgive.  But never, ever forget. 

From Abdullah Abdulsalam Belal…

I’m an Emirati, but I think there are still a lot of people who don’t’ know exactly from what that means. There are still many people in the world who’ve never even heard of the United Arab Emirates. The city of Dubai, however, is slowly becoming a place that people know. With that said, all anyone ever really hears are stories about what new project is being developed. The Internet is filled with information about the latest super-mall, the next tallest tower in the world, indoor ski resorts, and man made islands. What people don’t hear a lot about are the people and their ideas about life and living in the UAE.

I come from a very traditional part of the world, where society teaches us to be close to our families and religion. With all the changes happening around us, people sometimes ask me how the modernization of Dubai has affected my culture. I’m a teenager about to start my first year of college, and the world I grew up in is a lot different than that of my father. Not that long ago, nobody could have imagined my little country would achieve so much. In the old days, which for the Emirates were only twenty-five years ago, things were different. Teenagers went outside the house wearing our galabias, which are kind of like pajamas. They played football, barefoot in the open desert, not a tower in sight. Kandoras were also worn by everyone – a long, bright white one piece robe. They visited each other’s homes, played card games, or just sat and talked, and the world outside the UAE was so very far away.

Nowadays, life is so very different. We wear Western style clothes, surf the Net, hang out at the mall with our friends, eat MacDonald’s, line up to see the latest Hollywood movies, and watch MTV. In the end, we’re not much different from other teenagers around the world. Not only has our culture become tremendously influenced by outside forces, but also by the huge expatriate population. Eighty-seven percent of the people living in the United Arab Emirates are not Emirati, as foreigners from around the world come here to work and live. With only 900,000 Emirati citizens, I am a minority in my own country and even speaking my own language can make life difficult. We teenagers love talking in English but the reality is we simply have to, if we want to go out into society. Sometimes we even forget our own language and make mistakes when speaking Arabic.

With our country growing so fast, we teenagers sometimes feel out of place and not sure where we belong. The people that have come from across the globe, at times, dominate my country. Sometimes it’s me and my friends who feel like foreigners. Emiratis have had to learn how to embrace our new surroundings, as the old replaces the new. And its not only the old traditional villas being replaced with towers, or the empty spaces in the desert being filled with modern architecture; its old traditional values being replaced with new ways of thinking and empty spaces of thought being filled with the influence of the outside world. We’ve had to adapt top the changes and share our country with those who came to help build our society. We have learned from them and we continue to learn, as they have learned from us.

I guess I wear Western clothes because it’s a way to blend in with the other communities and not be an outsider. In a country like United States or Canada, newcomers blend into the home culture, but I think it’s the other way around here in the Emirates. If I go to the mall with a Kandora, I find myself surrounded by foreign teenagers wearing the latest fashion and I can feel all the eyes on me. Many stare and some even laugh. Even though I’m in my own country, I feel like I’m from another planet. Changes like this are a sacrifice, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices in life if we want to achieve more. And even though our lifestyles are changing, it doesn’t mean that our values and beliefs have to change. Yes, I have to admit, it has for some, but not for me. I still go to the mosque, still pray, still respect and love both my parents and siblings. I also still study just as hard as ever, to chase my dream of attending a college overseas.

I still love to wear my Kandora, but only do so occasionally. I still like listening to Arabic music, but also listen to R&B and Hip Hop. I still enjoy traditional Arab food, but also love KFC. I believe we must change if we want to move forward with the rest of the world and achieve greater things, but this doesn’t mean I have to leave behind who I am in the process. I’m only growing; only becoming more than I was before.

 I am very proud to be an Emirati. For me, the word equals my identity. A sense of pride always runs through when I say “I’m an Emirati,” the same way Americans feel proud of being American. I am happy to be an Emirati teenager. We grow up in one of the safest places in the world and are given so many opportunities to succeed. Where else can you find a government that pays high school kids to attend school? Where else in the world can you find country that pays for all post-secondary education at home or abroad, whether it’s a BA, an MA or a PhD?

A bright future lies ahead of us and I am proud of my homeland for coming so far, so fast. We’ve made the desert green and built an educated modern society. The United Arab Emirates is a diamond shining in the desert and a role model for other countries in the region. With that said, although we have come a long way, we still have much farther to go to reach the goals we have set.

Because of all the success my country, people sometimes think every Emirati has money – this is simply not true.  There are many poor or low income Emirati families in our society, who simply cannot afford the high cost of living. Many live in old villas, with little or no furniture and struggle just to survive. Often many of receive aid from the UAE Red Crescent Society, in order to provide food and housing for themselves. Some receive money from his highness Sheik Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE’s vice president. Many locals have debts because they want to keep up the appearance of an upper-class life. Many feel obligated to do so. They buy the nice new cars, the most expensive cell phones and clothes, take trips to Paris, all with money they don’t have. Soon, the banks come after them. Burdened by debt, some take the wrong path by forging checks, abusing alcohol, and taking drugs. This creates family problems and most of the time the husband and wife divorce. The ones who truly suffer are the children, especially those who come from homes where the father beats and abuses both them and their mothers. Addict and alcoholic fathers burdened by financial pressures of the luxurious lifestyle they feel obligated to have, results in the children not getting the guidance they need.

Even those families who are financially stable often have a two income household. With the father and mother both working, they often don’t have time for their children and try to make up for it, by buying them expensive gifts, giving them money, and letting them do whatever they want. Being abused or neglected, sometimes results in teenagers turning to theft, drugs, gangs, and violence. 

Another issue that can arise in families is when a man marries more than one wife. In my religion, a man can marry up to four wives. When the second or third wife joins the family, sometimes the husband will forget about the first wife and her children. After a time, he may re-focus on his first wife, but then forget about the second and so on. Many issues can arise from this situation and it’s one not many people talk about.

Finally, the rapid modernization of our country has changed our family structure. In many ways, it seems everybody is leading a new life. As little as a generation ago, women were uneducated, didn’t work, and stayed home to raise the children. Now, most young women want to go to university and have a career. They want to step out of the shadow of their husbands, so they to can enjoy their share of our country’s wonderful success. As a result, there are fewer women who would ever accept being one of two, three, or four wives. These days, I think most Emirati girls want to be their husband’s one and only.

As we move forward as a nation, education will be the key to our future success. Even though our country’s education system has come a long way in a short time, there are still many issues that need to be resolved and we need to work harder to improve our system. I am confident we can overcome the obstacles in front of us and achieve our goals, because our country has wise leadership in place. With that said, it will take time.

Looking at our education system, many locals prefer to give their children North American or United Kingdom style educations, but only a few can afford to send their kids to these private and very expensive schools. Locals who don’t have the money, send their children to government schools, and these schools simply must improve. Some of the schools here advertise and promise change, but in the end it’s all about money and not the education itself. Government schools need more qualified teachers, stronger management, and better means of discipline. The time for caning students should end. Textbooks should be up to international standards, core subjects like science and math should be taught in English, and English should be taught only by native speakers. The schools need to modernize their equipment, install computer labs, and other modern teaching tools wherever needed. The local high school I attended is making all the efforts to be the best system in the country, and I am proud to be a graduate of this shcool, but more can always be done.

As you know, our country is an Islamic country, but perhaps after reading this you’ll understand that we are not so different from the rest of the world. We might speak a different language and have different beliefs, but we’re not so different from people in other parts of our wonderful planet. We’re proud of our country and the great successes we’ve had, but also have problems, just like anybody else. People should try not to judge us from the outside, and certainly not from what you see on your news. Get to know us beyond the CNN image, and maybe you will discover… we’re really not all that different.

Born in Taif, Saudi Arabia, Staff Writer Eman Al Nafjan is the daughter of a Saudi Military Officer, moving often and throughout Saudi Arabia as a child. She later spent a significant portion of her childhood living in the United States. Al Nafjan has a BA in English Literature from the University of Riyadh and a Master’s Degree from the University of Birmingham in England. Currently she is working towards a PhD in linguistics.  Her exposure to both domestic and international plurality brings with it a multi-layered understanding of her own region and unique perspective of our world. More than anything, her varied background instills within her a deep-seeded interest in culture.  A courageous and transparent writer who uses both humor and passion in her work, Al Nafjan offers RELATIVTY OnLine another unique perspective and further still, true insight into heart of the sometimes mysterious Gulf Culture of the Middle East.  She also runs her own very enlightening blog at http://saudiwoman.wordpress.com/