{"id":12992,"date":"2017-05-26T01:23:37","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T08:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=12992"},"modified":"2017-05-26T01:23:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T08:23:37","slug":"it-all-makes-so-much-sense-now-or-i-think-im-moving-to-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/it-all-makes-so-much-sense-now-or-i-think-im-moving-to-sweden\/","title":{"rendered":"It All Makes So Much Sense Now (or I Think I\u2019m Moving to Sweden)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like David Livermore, I am fascinated by cultures and their differences. I love learning how different cultural values are lived out daily in the community as well as how they contrast with other cultures. Leading With Cultural Intelligence<\/em> is like reading an encyclopedia or a dictionary in which I uncover new things that help me join the interlocking pieces of a huge puzzle. In particular, his chapter on understanding ten (10) cultural value dimensions held me riveted and focused. Not only did it help me understand interactions (and epic failures) I have had in other countries, but I had some amazing insights about my own family of origin and how we have been influenced by two (or more) cultures.<\/p>\n

My maternal grandfather came to the U.S. from Sweden as a young boy and grew up in a home where he was not allowed to speak English in the house, and his mother held Swedish custom in, shall we say, enthusiastically high esteem. My maternal grandmother\u2019s family is Welsh. My fraternal grandparents were Dutch (grandfather) and Irish (grandmother). I guess you could say there is a whole lot of stubborn in my lineage. We are rather proud of it, in fact. What I didn\u2019t realize until I read Livermore\u2019s book is that much of the way my family interacted with the surrounding culture (especially in my childhood) was heavily influenced by the cultural values of my heritage countries. I remember my dad\u2019s mother talking about how community was more important than the individual in her Irish family, but I did not know that (generally) Swedish culture also values cooperation and community over competition (113). When I read that, the puzzle pieces started to click together. You know that individualism for which so many Americans are notorious? That just wasn\u2019t a thing in our family. In fact, while personal achievements were important, we rarely accomplished anything on our own. It was understood that the entire family was ready to help and be a resource, be it for a term paper or changing the oil in a car. My friends thought it was weird that our family could make an event out of moving, painting a house, helping with a remodel, or printing the Sunday bulletins for church. We took every \"\"<\/a>opportunity to be together, especially when something needed to be done. But it was more than that, we loved to just BE together. Sunday dinners were as much about sitting around napping in the same living room as they were about the food. That broken car that needed fixing was a great excuse for tacos and games when the work was done. According to Livermore, that \u201cbeing over doing\u201d thing is a Nordic trait too. (122) Sweet.<\/p>\n

When my grandparents died, I noticed that the communal value became a shadow of what it had previously been. Livermore helped me see that part of the reason for this is that those who held the cultural values most dearly are no longer here to influence our path. We still make events out of everyday work with my parents and my children, but my siblings and their families don\u2019t have the same longing for family community. The love of collaboration remains, but they have developed other communities with whom to party while painting. The whole thing makes me want to pick up my family and move to Sweden, where I can hopefully do a better job of fostering future generations focused on cooperation and quality of life.<\/p>\n

Looking at culture through the lenses Livermore has provided gives me valuable insight for not only those trips abroad where cultural sensitivity is crucial, but also for how to navigate the growing diversity of cultures right here at home. In the next couple of weeks, we will be moving to a new apartment in an area of Portland with a higher Latinx concentration. What cultural cues can I take note of i\"\"<\/a>n order to be a better neighbor? How can I engage with sensitivity and graciousness? The same questions apply to the discussions I will be having with members of the African American community as I pursue my research about ways to amplify and support women of color in our city (and hopefully further). How can I lay aside some of my own cultural assumptions and attitudes in order to truly see and hear those with whom I engage? Because, let\u2019s be real, most of us are not looking for better ways to do business in the global market. Rather, we are looking for ways to follow the \u201ccommandment\u201d to love our neighbors as ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like David Livermore, I am fascinated by cultures and their differences. I love learning how different cultural values are lived out daily in the community as well as how they contrast with other cultures. Leading With Cultural Intelligence is like reading an encyclopedia or a dictionary in which I uncover new things that help me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[945,721,979],"class_list":["post-12992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cq","tag-cultural-intelligence","tag-david-livermore","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12995,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992\/revisions\/12995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}