In contexts globalization together with growing nationalism and xenophobia, I've found this recurring patterns in two countries I happen to be a naturalized citizen of, on two continents:
"In our team, when a person with a foreign accent makes an unexpected choice, people tend to teach them what the “better or right” choice would be, by national standards, because they believe the "other" party needs to learn how things are done around here."
Whether it is eating with one’s hands rather than with a fork and a knife or choosing to be uncalculating about who's paying for coffee and cake -- at risk of being taken for a fool vulnerable to non-reciprocation - or "go Dutch", the intent may be good or xenophobic.
It may be a kind way of inviting someone into one's culture or it may flop as when the person being "taught" has been a naturalized citizen for 40+ years and the parents the person teaching them did not even know each other at that time because s/he is only 30 yrs. old - begging the question as to who is more the national than the other.
In either case, the rule should be modified to "let it be" or "check on the other’s background first and figure out if they know local practices and are not making an error but are consciously just making a different harmless choice".
Hi Camille, what a fascinating example of a rule in use. It certainly has the hallmarks of 'rigid' behaviour in the sense that it is relatively insensitive to the actual conditions. I love the way that you are trying to take what I have written and relate it to your own life. Rule governed behaviour is really anything that is under the control of a mental model that people have inside about what will happen. In this case it sounds like there is no need to 'fix you' but the person does it anyway. Perhaps they have been reinforced in a situation for helping people with foreign accents - and this is just over-applying that rule. Thanks again for making the time to engage with the post :-)
Growing up, loving my 3 months+ stays in 5 different families — of different credences and mores than my own, in countries where I knew nothing of the language, and culture, starting at age 5 — “reading the room“ definitely required an openness to unexpected outcomes and hence, to failure — which my siblings, who both hated that, didn’t seem to have. Who knows, if starting earlier than them and then failing first grade were assets, after all - had I known I wouldn’t have felt so bad about it.
Clearly, those kinds experiences teach complex discrimination as to “what will go well, where, when, and with whom” and each new experience contributes to that repertoire. I think that while higher order discriminations are going on and that we develop heuristics (sometimes to the point of displaying unconscious biases) it seems like a very inefficient way to go about it. Therefore, I wonder if that’s all that’s being selected. Like you said “context-sensitivity might be more about quality of attention and reflective capacity than pure repetition.”
I sense big differences in the level of comfort people who’ve had the opportunity to travel compared to those who haven’t - regardless of where they’re from —, have with people who display different mores. This makes me wonder about "cusp behaviors" - e.g., “the quality of attention”, as you suggest including withholding judgement and persisting in the relational space, while attempting to understand what someone “who doesn’t makes much sense” may be trying to communicate.
This kind of behavior can be quite embarrassing on both sides of a diad — I recall being quite anxious, as a teen, at the thought I’d pass for stupid because I struggled with English so much - a fear neither I not my children had at younger ages. On the listener side, I can recall being in company that felt very uncomfortable at my hanging around to interact with someone like that “too long” - 1-2 minutes, was enough for them to start signaling “drop it”!
Getting over that hurdle - on either side of the relational space - is a door opener however, after which the benefit of all kinds of "pivot behaviors" can flow! So, is it the propensity for cusp and pivot behaviors that is being selected?
How else could we account for the patient / tolerant “first encounter” with a non speaker from yet another culture? I can think of many other challenging cases like interacting with people while they struggle with addiction, I’ve seen that in interactions with people who have conditions like Cerebral palsy, Parkinson etc. People who are unfamiliar with those issues might do better than others owing to having that kind of cusp behavior. What do you think?
What a wonderful set of skills to develop and thank you for sharing your experience. I wanted to share with you that I watched the video you recommended with Fredirico Faggin and it was AMAZING! I really got the quantum consciousness perspective in a new way. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Also, his take on quantum consciousness is fascinating indeed.
However, his description of the impoverishment of human potential as we increasingly rely on machines that operate by way of 1s and 0s -- that are deprived of even the slightest spark of consciousness -- gets really freaky when one reads about the transhumanist path we seem to be on, as part of the race for supposed ""Intellectual Sovereignty", by way Brain Machine Interface (BMI), that makes dystopic science fiction a reality -- i.e., as per this (very long, if you can bear it) document:
- Masakowski, Y. R., & Blatny, J. M. (Eds.). (2023). Mitigating and responding to cognitive warfare (NATO STO Technical Report STO-TR-HFM-ET-356). NATO Science and Technology Organization. --
In contexts globalization together with growing nationalism and xenophobia, I've found this recurring patterns in two countries I happen to be a naturalized citizen of, on two continents:
"In our team, when a person with a foreign accent makes an unexpected choice, people tend to teach them what the “better or right” choice would be, by national standards, because they believe the "other" party needs to learn how things are done around here."
Whether it is eating with one’s hands rather than with a fork and a knife or choosing to be uncalculating about who's paying for coffee and cake -- at risk of being taken for a fool vulnerable to non-reciprocation - or "go Dutch", the intent may be good or xenophobic.
It may be a kind way of inviting someone into one's culture or it may flop as when the person being "taught" has been a naturalized citizen for 40+ years and the parents the person teaching them did not even know each other at that time because s/he is only 30 yrs. old - begging the question as to who is more the national than the other.
In either case, the rule should be modified to "let it be" or "check on the other’s background first and figure out if they know local practices and are not making an error but are consciously just making a different harmless choice".
Does that work as an example?
Hi Camille, what a fascinating example of a rule in use. It certainly has the hallmarks of 'rigid' behaviour in the sense that it is relatively insensitive to the actual conditions. I love the way that you are trying to take what I have written and relate it to your own life. Rule governed behaviour is really anything that is under the control of a mental model that people have inside about what will happen. In this case it sounds like there is no need to 'fix you' but the person does it anyway. Perhaps they have been reinforced in a situation for helping people with foreign accents - and this is just over-applying that rule. Thanks again for making the time to engage with the post :-)
Growing up, loving my 3 months+ stays in 5 different families — of different credences and mores than my own, in countries where I knew nothing of the language, and culture, starting at age 5 — “reading the room“ definitely required an openness to unexpected outcomes and hence, to failure — which my siblings, who both hated that, didn’t seem to have. Who knows, if starting earlier than them and then failing first grade were assets, after all - had I known I wouldn’t have felt so bad about it.
Clearly, those kinds experiences teach complex discrimination as to “what will go well, where, when, and with whom” and each new experience contributes to that repertoire. I think that while higher order discriminations are going on and that we develop heuristics (sometimes to the point of displaying unconscious biases) it seems like a very inefficient way to go about it. Therefore, I wonder if that’s all that’s being selected. Like you said “context-sensitivity might be more about quality of attention and reflective capacity than pure repetition.”
I sense big differences in the level of comfort people who’ve had the opportunity to travel compared to those who haven’t - regardless of where they’re from —, have with people who display different mores. This makes me wonder about "cusp behaviors" - e.g., “the quality of attention”, as you suggest including withholding judgement and persisting in the relational space, while attempting to understand what someone “who doesn’t makes much sense” may be trying to communicate.
This kind of behavior can be quite embarrassing on both sides of a diad — I recall being quite anxious, as a teen, at the thought I’d pass for stupid because I struggled with English so much - a fear neither I not my children had at younger ages. On the listener side, I can recall being in company that felt very uncomfortable at my hanging around to interact with someone like that “too long” - 1-2 minutes, was enough for them to start signaling “drop it”!
Getting over that hurdle - on either side of the relational space - is a door opener however, after which the benefit of all kinds of "pivot behaviors" can flow! So, is it the propensity for cusp and pivot behaviors that is being selected?
How else could we account for the patient / tolerant “first encounter” with a non speaker from yet another culture? I can think of many other challenging cases like interacting with people while they struggle with addiction, I’ve seen that in interactions with people who have conditions like Cerebral palsy, Parkinson etc. People who are unfamiliar with those issues might do better than others owing to having that kind of cusp behavior. What do you think?
What a wonderful set of skills to develop and thank you for sharing your experience. I wanted to share with you that I watched the video you recommended with Fredirico Faggin and it was AMAZING! I really got the quantum consciousness perspective in a new way. Thank you so much for sharing it.
I love the "the whole is one; one is dynamic; and want wants to know itself".
Also, his take on quantum consciousness is fascinating indeed.
However, his description of the impoverishment of human potential as we increasingly rely on machines that operate by way of 1s and 0s -- that are deprived of even the slightest spark of consciousness -- gets really freaky when one reads about the transhumanist path we seem to be on, as part of the race for supposed ""Intellectual Sovereignty", by way Brain Machine Interface (BMI), that makes dystopic science fiction a reality -- i.e., as per this (very long, if you can bear it) document:
- Masakowski, Y. R., & Blatny, J. M. (Eds.). (2023). Mitigating and responding to cognitive warfare (NATO STO Technical Report STO-TR-HFM-ET-356). NATO Science and Technology Organization. --
https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/STO%20Technical%20Reports/STO-TR-HFM-ET-356/%24%24TR-HFM-ET-356-ALL.pdd
Perhaps a chilling impetus to deepen out collective spirituality over hording subcutaneous gadgets.