Blog #4

The Soviet Union was the 2^nd scariest thing in the world to me as a child growing up in the early 80’s behind talking to girls. I had to watch movie after movie on how to fight and defend this great country of ours against the dreaded “Red Army”. Movies like Red Dawn, Rambo, and Top Gun were essential to watch repeatedly to study how to fight this superpower if they ever invaded or launched a nuclear weapon against us. Once these two countries decided to duke it out like Apollo Creed and Ivan Drago, we all knew that one of them would not be leaving the ring, much like Rocky IV. I grew up despising the Soviets. To this day I can remember the images of the wall collapsing in Berlin vividly and watching communist USSR collapsing with every piece being removed. But what was the story with these Russians turned Soviets who turned back into Russians?

Every one of those movies portrays the Soviet/Russian people as a ruthless power-hungry country with no regard for anything except the glory of “Mother Russia”. The country was littered with gulags and if you did not put country first and foremost, you ended up disappearing and were never heard of again. The only good thing about this region to me as I grew up was knowing that Nazi’s lost WW2 because of Hitler’s ego and his brash attempts at fighting a 2 front war not thinking about the unbearable winter headed his troops way. Now, sitting here in 2020, all we hear about is Russian hackers and Putin did this, Trump and Putin this, election tampering etc. I still do not know much about this countries culture and people. Lesson 14 opened my eyes to something, leaving me wonder if this has any fallout from the fall of communism in region.

It makes sense that the culture of Russia is more like that of its Western Neighbors in Europe than that of their Asian Southern neighbors just based on the geography on the country. The Russian population is highly concentrated on the western side of the country that borders Europe, and the ancestors of most Russians (and much of eastern Europe) migrated from Africa. Some of the population settled there and eventually became eastern Europeans and Russians while some moved towards western Europe and India (Barford, 2001). Traditionally, there has been limited migration from Asia because of vast geological barriers, such as the Siberian tundra, the Mongolian desert, and the Caucasus and Sayan Mountains.[1] Russia was a type of monarchy during World War I and after the tsar lost power, the government in place failed and gave birth to the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin and the rest is history. [2] So, what was interesting in reading lesson 14, was in reading the  Hofstede’s cultural data. The power distance score was not surprising, but the low score in Masculinity threw me off a tad. I mean, Russians drink Vodka like water, the wrestle bears for fun and their President is always walking around shirtless with guns or riding horses topless. No way their masculinity score can be that low, can it? My guess is this is because they really are only what, 19 years removed from the fall of the UUSR right? Under that communist regime, everyone is basically treated equally, and serves a purpose, and that purpose was to make the USSR great.

A high masculinity scores means people are motivated by wanting to be the best and to achieve. While a low masculinity score is viewed as feminine, meaning people are motivated by enjoying what they do. Russia scores low in masculinity with a 36. Hofstede relates this score to the power distance dimension; Russians are modest regarding their own personal achievements, while dominant behavior is only accepted when coming from people in high positions. [3] So, in understanding this, it all kind of makes sense now. All the glory from an achievement was for benefit of the country as whole and not individuals. This is something I would have never known, and if I have ever had to present to a mostly Russian audience, I most likely would have offended them!  Know your audience is something I live by work wise, and this lesson taught me something new!

[1] canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697220.

[2] canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697221.

[3] McDonald, M. (2017, June 27). Understanding Russian Culture To Engage Your Audience. Russian Search Marketing. https://russiansearchmarketing.com/understanding-russian-culture-engage-audience/.

The comparison of Individualism-collectivism for China and India scores India really made me realize I may not have a particularly good understanding of these countries’ cultures. I know that China is a communist government nation, so their score being so low on the individualism side did not shock me. The state provides for everyone, so everyone in turn works for the state. India though, being right on the average of the world really got me asking myself what I really knew about the Indian culture. My opinions are based on the vague understanding of the caste system, the staggering number of gang rapes that used to make the news of women, and that it was quite possibly the most beautiful but dirtiest places in the world at the same time.

The world average for the cultural dimension of individualism is 45.17, and India’s score of 48 is almost the same as the world average. That means that India contains a blend of individualistic and collectivistic tendencies.[1] How can a culture with rules in place dictating someone’s future based on their caste system score right in line with the rest of the world? My limited understanding is that you are born into a caste grouping and then the rest of your life is based on that caste. You marry within that caste; certain careers are open to you based on your caste system. So how does this county not score lower, since to me it is more of a collectivism country?

Before I could begin to get to the bottom of this, I realized I might need a refresher on the caste system in place. The caste system is the Hindu social and religious hierarchy, created a few thousand years ago. Traditionally, a person’s caste is determined at birth and channels them into that caste’s occupation. At the top are Brahmins, priests and religious scholars. At the bottom are Dalits, who are technically outside the caste system and do the dirtiest jobs — cleaning sewers, taking away dead animals, tanning leather and other tasks considered to pollute a person in Hinduism. [2] As I read this article, I felt even more confused, as to me I was basically reading what I has assumed was the case all along. People in India are born into a caste and there is no way out of that caste.

The article I found on this follows a Dalit man named Suraj Yengde, who broke free from this caste system to America, and became a very successful lawyer with a masters of law and a doctorate and is currently a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I stopped as I read that part of the story, wondering to myself how difficult that journey must have been. The Indian Constitution of 1950 deemed caste discrimination to be illegal, but here this article is written in 2019 and this young man broken thru this discrimination to become an outlier. Suraj makes this powerful statement about the caste system. “Caste is primarily an occupation-based system. You are given the position in the job hierarchy,” he says. “So the filthiest or the lowest-considered jobs were given to the ‘Untouchable’ population, and their ancestors and their ancestors and on and on, have been doing the same job — cleaning the human filth with their bare hands.”[3] So again, I am more confused at ow this county had a median score basically. Then I did some searching on how this can be and of course, it hit me as soon as I read the next article.

The score is reflective of not only the caste system in place, but because of the Hindu religion. In a piece by Hofstede Insights, it was written clear as day. The Individualist aspect of Indian society is seen as a result of its dominant religion/philosophy – Hinduism. The Hindus believe in a cycle of death and rebirth, with the manner of each rebirth being dependent upon how the individual lived the preceding life. People are, therefore, individually responsible for the way they lead their lives and the impact it will have upon their rebirth. This focus on individualism interacts with the otherwise collectivist tendencies of the Indian society which leads to its intermediate score on this dimension.[4] And just like that BOOM! The answer I was looking for, and honestly never once had I even thought religion would be the reason. But still, I feel baffled because on one hand the religion drives you to individualism et still there is blatant discrimination and violence against those deemed unworthy, from a caste system that dictates most people’s lives and jobs? I feel like I will have to venture deepen down the rabbit hole to really et an understanding but for now, at least I answered one questions that I had after reading lesson 10.

 

[1] canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697204.

 

 

[2] Martin, P. (2019, March 5). Even with a Harvard pedigree, caste follows ‘like a shadow’. The World from PRX. https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-05/even-harvard-pedigree-caste-follows-shadow.

 

[3] Martin, P. (2019, March 5). Even with a Harvard pedigree, caste follows ‘like a shadow’. The World from PRX. https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-05/even-harvard-pedigree-caste-follows-shadow.

 

 

[4] Country Comparison. Hofstede Insights. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/india/.

My middle name is Mohammed and my last name is Ibrahim, and I was the first person on both sides of my family to be born in the United States, which was all the way back in 1974. I am of a mostly Egyptian background, with some Moroccan, Turkish and basically a Hodge podge other Middle Eastern ethnicity. I was a practicing Muslim for a long while but not as a hard liner like my father. I like to drink alcohol, eat pork, and have a tattoo.  I fasted during Ramadan, went to Friday prayers and would donate my yearly Zakat. Zakat, or almsgiving, is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with prayer, fasting, pilgrimage (Hajj), and belief in Allah (SWT) and His Messenger Prophet Muhammad (SAW). For every sane, adult Muslim who owns wealth over a certain amount–known as the nisab–he or she must pay 2.5% of that wealth as zakat. [1] I have never been arrested, I have never been in any real trouble of any kind, and yet I was on a no-fly list for years following 9/11.  I would have to show up to flights four to five hours early to sit and watch the airlines agents call Homeland Security to get me “cleared” to board a flight, and I definitely missed quite a few flights because of this, even though my birth certificate shows my place of birth as Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Thirteen people were charged Thursday in an alleged domestic terrorism plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, federal and state officials announced.[2] Now, what is baffling in this story, they were not charged with terrorism, and are referred to as “militia”. The FBI divides the terrorist threat facing the United States into two broad categories—domestic and international. Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state. Acts are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct of a government. These acts transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate, or the locale in which perpetrators operate. [3]

What I do not get it is that domestic and international terrorist organizations are a threat to all Americans residing in the United States, so why not unify these two types as just plain old terrorism? You never hear the term International Terrorism in the media. But it seems we like to defer to the term militia to describe groups of citizens who want to use violence to make their point heard. An act of violence harming innocent people for something you believe in should be called a terrorist act in my opinion, plain and simple.

Our module on Saudi Arabia has this definition for heuristic: calling up a known event to form an opinion even when the information is atypical.[4] After 9/11 things got weird for my family and I. My brother was pulled over in our town back in California shortly after 9/11 and when the police officer was looking at his license, he read aloud my brothers middle name, which is Mohammed like mine. He then proceeded to ask him if he had any grenades in the car. My mom went to the bank to make deposits into her bank accounts. The Patriot Act made any deposits over $10, 000 reportable to the federal government. And this caused a teller to be suspicious, and she refused to make the deposits because they were just under $10,000 and she thought my mom was doing this so they could not report it. It caused a whole scene; my mom was being glared at and even sneered at people in the bank. Thankfully, the manager came out, took my mom away from the situation, and made her deposits, like she had been doing monthly long before 9/11. They were labeled terrorists because of their names and here these 13 people who were arrested in Michigan will probably never be called terrorists, and it just does not sit right with me at all.

[1] Zakat Donation – Pay Zakat Online. Islamic Relief USA. (2020, September 17). https://irusa.org/zakat/.

[2] Carrega, C., Stracqualursi, V., & Campbell, J. (2020, October 9). 13 charged in plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/fbi-plot-michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer/index.html.

[3] FBI. (2002, February 6). The Terrorist Threat Confronting the United States. FBI. https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/the-terrorist-threat-confronting-the-united-states.

[4] canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697186.

I once took a public speaking class where the teacher did two things that will always that I will always remember. The first was to play the movie Cast Away all the way till the part where Wilson the volleyball is lost to the sea. Then she immediately stooped the movie and had has discuss what was our initial thoughts. The part to me that stood out immediate was the lack of communication until Tom Hanks accidentally brings Wilson to life. She asked me why I brought this up, and I immediately responded with ” Tom Hanks hast spoken more than 5 words since the plane crashed. I could not imagine hearing any voices for that long.” In that same class, we then listened to the rock classic ” Communication Breakdown” by Led Zeppelin. After the song, we discussed in depth about how a communication breakdown occurs. I had never truly listened to the lyrics of that song and it was amazing to me to listen and interpret them.

Communication is defined as interpersonal acts that exchange meaning and information.[1] But as I learned in discussing that Led Zeppelin song, communication, while simple, has quite a bit of things to go through to be understood correctly. For proper communication, the originator of the message is called the sender, and the process of creating the message is known as encoding. The receiver is the person to whom the message is transmitted, and the process of understanding the message is known as decoding. In between those two people is the method of transmission of the message, which is referred to as the channel.[2] So, in layman’s terms, the sender creates a message, sends it out and the receiver then must listen and interpret the message. Easy enough right? Not quite.

The message must be decoded correctly, or the meaning of the message can get lost. How can that be you say? Well, what if the message was decoded and interpreted incorrectly by the receiver? This happens quite often and easily, especially with all the various ways to communicate these days. Take an email for instance. Have you responded to an email in all CAPS on accident? I sure have, and when I do that paired along with a short response, it sure comes off as I am irritated. I probably just fat fingered the caps lock and was so busy I did not even notice until a response came back, and I saw it. The receiver of that message must interpret my response, which came across as “yelling” and figure out how to respond back accordingly, in hopes of not potentially causing me to get more upset. Text messages are notorious for this lack of detectable emotion for the most part. There exist many barriers to communication and these may occur at any stage in the communication process. Barriers may lead to your message becoming distorted and you therefore risk wasting both time and/or money by causing confusion and misunderstanding. Effective communication involves overcoming these barriers and conveying a clear and concise message.[3] To communicate effectively, you have to understand how the message can be interpreted on the receivers end, and to avoid confusion, you have to be clear and concise in your initial message.

Last week at work someone was asking me where we stood on an item I was tasked with. I could not find the email for the life of me that everyone kept referencing to me. I looked and looked and finally I asked for someone to resend it to me and apologized. Come to find out the original sender had confused two firms we were in communication with about platform availability, and they had replied the email chain for firm A but was discussing firm B. When I asked why we had sent an email from firm A to firm B, that person replied they had no idea and that we should be talking to firm B. This is a perfect example of communication breakdown. From the title of the email, I decoded the message as being about Firm A and I was supposed to be focused on firm B. How was I to know this? I could not know, hence the breakdown in communication. I bet I wasted like 30 minutes looking for an email that was incorrectly tagged. This is not the first time it will happen and will not be the last time. I have learned over the years in corporate America that clear and concise communication is as important as understanding your role. I am a notorious one word or one sentence response person. This gets me in trouble at times, as the receivers of my message take my shortness as being irritated or difficult. I have been called to explain the shortness of my emails, and I just laugh and tell folks I was in a meeting or call and felt an immediate response was needed and kept it short.  I once was called out for not actually typing into my reply Hi and the person’s name, I was responding to. All my responses from that point on have included the persons name and at last a sentence or two. I was not being clear and concise in my responses, and the intent of the message was lost on my receiver, because of egocentrism we think that the difference is easy to perceive. As we are writing an e-mail, we write it with our own perspective. We know what we mean, after all. And we use that frame of reference to make assumptions about how other people are going to interpret us, which is a bias that can lead to miscommunication.[4]

Clear and concise communication is quite important to me, as I am a very analytical person with a heavy splash of emotion. When I get a communication that is not clear to me, I start to over analyze what might in fact be an amazingly simple request. My wife must remind at times when I over communicate something to my son to remember that he is 12, and I lost him after 30 seconds into my message. Knowing your audience is also a big key in clear communication. Explaining something to my 12-year-old the same I explain things to professionals at work will never allow him to decode the message correctly. The irony in this that my 12-year-old and work have a lot on common these days in that neither listens to me. Which makes me wonder, is something with them or is my message not getting thru?

[1] Schneider, F. W. (2012). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Pub.

 

[2] Schneider, F. W. (2012). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Pub.

[3] Communication Barriers. http://phicare.com/competencies/communicationbarriers.php.

[4] canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697169.

Hi everyone- after a 3 to 4 year break I am back to finish my BA in Organizational Leadership. Hopefully i can knock out the last 4 classes and graduate in the Spring of 2021 at the ripe age of 47. When I am not working, parenting, or husbanding , I love to fish fresh water and typically do it from a kayak or from the shore with my 11 year old son. Best of luck to everyone this semester and keep going strong!