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We Are Prisoners of Our Culture
We are prisoners of our own culture. Culture resembles a belt. You are not even aware of it until you start thinking about it. Most of the time you wear your culture without being conscious of it. Nevertheless, culture determines what you can and cannot do, what you can succeed at and what you will surely fail at. There is no better way to show this than to contrast Samoan culture and the predominant culture of the United States. If you go around Samoa -- as I have -- asking Samoans to tell you what the predominant Samoan values are, you will discover a very high degree of agreement. Samoans will tell you over and over that Samoan values are "love," "respect," "help," "dignity," and "sharing." If you ask a cross-section of Americans what they think American values are, you will be given the answers "individuality," "freedom," "self-expression" and "money." Samoan values and American values are diametrically opposed. Americans believe in money and profit and the value of accumulating as opposed to the value of giving money and things away. If you hunt in Samoa for the pure, traditional Samoan families who have been successful at business, you will not find any. When one of your predominant values is sharing and when you believe that the good of the social group is more important than the good of the individual, which Samoans generally believe, than you are doomed to fail in business. It is impossible for an individual to accumulate money and still be a good Samoan. It is not an accident that the large stores in downtown Apia all have the names of mixed-origin families, part European and part Samoan. In these families, formed by the union of a European (usually a German or a New Zealander) and a Samoan, a European with stingy Western values was successful in starting a business because he was selfish enough to be able to accumulate profit and make the business succeed. When his Samoan relatives asked for something, he often didn't give them what they wanted. Contrast this with the effort I have seen Samoans make to start a business. The business always fails because relatives come up and say, "Please, I have no money today, but could you give me a can of corned beef, some rice, and some pilchards?" Because of the value of help and love, Samoans will most often give the person what they ask for. And when enough instances of this occur, the business fails. No culture is better than another. But most cultures are better at achieving certain goals than are others. The others will have strengths, too, but different ones. |
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