Environments

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Housing Styles and Openness to Strangers

lanaiI am in Seoul, South Korea this week but was in Honolulu last week for the CALICO Conference on language learning and technology.  Walking around Honolulu and seeing how people live prompted some thoughts about the relationship between housing styles/preferences and communication patterns.  One of the things that struck me in riding around Honolulu on the bus was how open communication between strangers was.  I noticed on a couple of occasions older Hawaiians striking up conversations with schoolchildren and, contrary to the reaction typical in many other U.S. cities, the children readily responding.  Guess they didn’t get the message about not talking with strangers.  The porous barriers between people is reflected in the housing styles in Honolulu where there is an open transition between indoors and outdoors.  You see lots of furniture outside, including sofas, that would be a strange site in most North American cities.  Hawaiians love to hang out on the lanai, which is a patio that serves as another room of the house. This is related of course to the wonderful year-round weather in Hawaii, but it struck me also as being in harmony with the casual communication style.

I think those thoughts came to me from watching while in Hawaii the German news reporting on the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.  There was disbelief on the part of the German reporter in Oklahoma and the news anchor that houses there were made of wood and had no storm shelters. There are no tornadoes in Germany (hence probably the intense interest by Germans in this exotic and frightening weather event) but if one roared across the Atlantic, German houses would be ready.  They are built very securely and have heavy shutters with which to cover windows, with roofs covered in slate or ceramic tiles (not our flimsy roof tiles).  German houses are self-sufficient islands of security, fenced off additionally from the outside world through tall hedges or fences surrounding the garden areas and house. Doors are closed and locked.  When we exchanged houses a few years ago with a German family, my German colleague’s wife was quite upset that there were not locks on all the interior rooms. What a world of difference from Hawaii!  And certainly riding on public transportation in Germany you rarely see the kinds of interactions among strangers I saw in Honolulu. Germans tend to be reserved in public, but quite open and friendly once you get to know them. Maybe the difference has more to do with the weather than anything else, but it is interesting to reflect on the mirroring of environment and communication.

On talking to the strangers, there is a very nice recent TED talk by Maria Bezaitis, “The surprising need for strangeness“

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Feng Shui to the rescue

fengshui


In Hunan Province, a boulder was placed outside a government building to create better feng shui for superstitious civil servants. (Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times)

Article in today’s NY Times about the use of feng shui by local Chinese government officials as a line of defense against trouble. Feng shui (风水，literally wind-water) refers to the ancient Chinese techniques of orienting physical space for maximizing good spirit energy (气，qi), resulting in improved health, prosperity, and luck. It is important for many Chinese to make sure any new building is built with good feng shui, which often means orienting the building in particular ways depending on local landmarks such as bodies of water or mountains. Using feng shui, however, is officially discouraged by the Chinese Communist Party and in fact was outlawed under Mao, as the practice was considered to be feudalistic and superstitious. As more cracks appear in the Communist Party in today’s China, feng shui is making a comeback.

The article gives a number of examples of officials enlisting the help of feng shui to deal with troublesome issues such as peasant complaints, personal problems, or corruption investigations. In Zoumajie, for example, a stone wall was built by the local land resources office in order to block the bad qi emanating from a pair of stone lions in front of a different government building. Other examples:

In 2009, county officials in the western province of Gansu spent $732,000 transporting a 369-ton boulder six miles to the county seat, a move feng shui masters said would ward off bad luck. As part of the consecration ceremony, the county magistrate walked 325 feet toward the “spirit rock,” kowtowing every three steps.

In February 2010, People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece, reported that Cui Xinyuan, the party chief of Gaoyi County in Hebei Province, had installed a decommissioned fighter jet in the middle of a boulevard opposite the government headquarters so he could soar to the empyrean of Chinese power. The jet was intended to block the flow of bad luck, according to local residents, but it ultimately just blocked traffic.

In the latter case, the official’s use of a jet to counteract bad qi didn’t prevent the official from being sentenced to 13 years in prison for bribery.  It turns out that hard work and honesty may actually be a better way for officials to prosper, but work is no fun and bribes can be awfully temping.

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Name: “Jihad”

jihadIs it a provocation or an incitement to terrorism to name your son “Jihad”?  How about if you send your son, Jihad, to school wearing a t-shirt stating “Je suis une bombe” (I am a bomb)?  This actual case is being tried currently in France, with a judgment expected next month.  The boy in question was born Sept 11, 2009 and was given the name Jihad by his parents.  Last fall his uncle gave him a t-shirt with the bomb quote on the front and on the back, “Jihad, né le 11 septembre” (Jihad, born September 11th), which he wore one day to nursery school. Bouchra Bagour, the mother, was reported to police by the teacher and charged with “glorifying crime”.  She and the uncle now face a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a 45,000 Euros fine. They say the shirt was supposed to be a joke and highlight the boy’s birthday.

In fact, the actual meaning of “Je suis une bombe” is something like I’m fantastic (like English ‘da bomb’).  Jihad is a first name that has been used for a long time.  The case has created much discussion in France.  Here’s one comment from a reader forum for the French daily Le Parisien:

“Je m appelle Jihad , j’ai fait des études et je n’ai aucun problème dans ma vie. Jihad n’est pas un prénom né le 11 septembre , vous êtes au courant ? Il est donné depuis des millénaires. Le mot jihad à la base veut dire lutte contre ses péchés.” (My name is Jihad, I’m a university graduate and have never had any problems [with my name].  Jihad is not a name created by September 11th, did you know that?  It’s been used for millennia.  The word jihad means to fight to overcome one’s sins.).

It’s not just in France that the word Jihad arouses controversy. Last fall conservative blogger Pamela Gellar’s American Freedom Defense Initiative ran a series of ads on buses which stated, “”In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man…Support Israel, Defeat Jihad.” In response, the the Council on American-Islamic Relations has begun a campaign to educate Americans both about the traditional meaning of jihad and the real nature of Muslims.  The “My Jihad” campaign is running ads on public buses, featuring Muslim Americans talked about the struggles they have confronted (i.e., their “jihads”).

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Norwegian wood

Lars Mytting wrote “Solid Wood" & inspired a TV program about firewood.

Lars Mytting wrote “Solid Wood” & inspired a TV program about firewood

There have been several stories in the media (NT Times: Bark Up or Down? Firewood Splits Norwegians) recently about a cultural phenomenon that may strike outsiders as very foreign, the importance of how firewood should be stacked. The stories were inspired by the enormous popularity in Norway of a book about firewood (Solid Wood by Lars Mytting) and also of a prime-time TV show on the same topic.  The TV show focused on chopping and stacking wood and was watched by over a million viewers (out of a total population of 5 million), but it also caused considerable controversy – a number of viewers contacted the station complaining that how the wood was being stacked was all wrong.  It turns out that there are strong feelings in Norway about how the stacked firewood should be oriented in reference to its bark, whether the bark should face up or down, so as to aid in faster drying.

The TV special was actually 12 hours long, with the first 4 hours showing and discussing wood cutting and stacking, with the final 8 hours showing live a fire in a fireplace in a Bergen farmhouse.  Through the hours, one could see wood being added and sausages being roasted on sticks, but no sounds were heard other than the burning of the fire.  One comment reported by NY Times article: “’I couldn’t go to bed because I was so excited’, a viewer called niesa36 said on the Dagbladet newspaper Web site. ‘When will they add new logs? Just before I managed to tear myself away, they must have opened the flue a little, because just then the flames shot a little higher…I’m not being ironic,’ the viewer continued. ‘For some reason, this broadcast was very calming and very exciting at the same time.’”  Such sentiments were not universal, however, as the article reports: “On Twitter, a viewer named Andre Ulveseter said: ‘Went to throw a log on the fire, got mixed up, and smashed it right into the TV.’”

The last time Norway was in the news was for something diametrically opposed to the program’s images of peace, calm and simplicity, namely the deadly rampage by Anders Brevik in Oslo in 2011, resulting in 77 deaths. The popularity of the firewood book and TV special may be related to the aftermath of this event, which caused considerable soul-searching in Norway.  Wood burning stoves and the cultural practices that surround their use have a long tradition in a country with long and severe winters.  Firewood culture harkens back to a traditional Norwegian way of life, free from the violence and political strife of the world today.

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Culture & success

Mitt Romney’s comments in Israel during his recent trip abroad raise interesting questions about the relationship between cultural values and economic success.  He compared the much higher per capita income in Israel compared to Palestine:  “Culture makes all the difference…and as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.”  He didn’t enter into any specifics on what cultural differences he had in mind, presumably aspects of the culture that favor industry, frugality, and an entrepreneurial spirit?  Or was it individualism (Israel) versus collectivism (Palestine)?

This echoes the discussion that has arisen from President Obama’s comments that successful businesses in the United States were not built exclusively by the business owners, but owed part of their success to the infrastructure created by American tax payers.  Objections were quickly raised that business owners created success exclusively through their own initiative and hard work – the triumphant result of unbridled individualism.  Reminds me of the hefty debates over Hilary Clinton’s “It takes a village” and the criticism of this advocacy of “collectivism”.  A particular virulent attack on collectivism comes from the “one government” critics.

Romney’s remarks were criticized in that he didn’t talk about the very unequal opportunities in Israel and Palestine.  He was also way off in stating that personal income in Israel is twice that in Palestine:  it’s more like 20 to 1. Of course what Romney meant by “success” was exclusively economic prosperity – as a businessman that is understandably his focus.  Is the point of his comparison that Palestinians would be well advised to change their cultural values?  It would be interesting to see where the Israel and Palestine rank in happiness indices.