Reality: Cultural Values the Newsweek

¶ … Reality: Cultural Values The Newsweek cover story by Evan Thomas and John Barry from February 18, 1991, "War's New Science" presents, in the wake of the successful first Gulf War, a rosy vision of future conflict in the Middle East. The tone of the article, in light of the current Iraq and Afghanistan war, is almost surreal in its optimism: "A cost-free victory. A push-button, remote-control war won without casualties.

Surgical strikes that wipe out military targets while sparing civilians." For the Pentagon, "tech can almost never be too high," and the article looks forward to an era of war for Americans that is as easy as playing a video game. What is most striking about this article, in light of Kluckhohns' Value Orientations is its future-focused nature. The future, it is assumed, is invariably better than the past. American individualism also seems implied, given the article's stress upon the need to protect individual American troops.

It is assumed that individual causalities have value, and it is not glorious to sacrifice one's life for a collective cause, even though warfare is endemic to human society. The stress is upon 'doing' rather than upon the moral implications of the new technology -- the question if it would it be good, for example, for a nation to be able to wage war with few consequences for its peoples' safety, is not asked, because it is assumed that America will only wage war for wholesome purposes.

(Despite the fact that European's superior technology to Native Americans resulted in the immoral decimation of native tribes). And the article assumes above all that Americans are the masters of their fate and nature. Dominant American cultural patterns have always included individualism and confidence in the ability of humans to manipulate both history and nature with technology. There is also a strong sense of American superiority, as if a moral nation such as America could never engage in a war that was not just.

The assumption is that war is just, and can be managed correctly through technology. The only obstacle is money, and as the authors themselves admit: "Americans have always looked to science for their answers, in war as in everything else." Question 2 Although both China and America are major superpowers, they are polar opposites in terms of their cultural orientations. In contrast to American bluntness, Chinese speakers tend to communicate indirectly, often using subtle language to convey strong feelings rather than blurting them out.

In China, there is a strong value upon tradition, and protocol, and respect for power distance. This contrasts with the value placed upon individualism and creativity in low-context societies. While in the United States, individualism is seen as a positive thing, in China individualism is often seen as a form of selfishness, and deviating from the norm is not embraced as delightfully nonconformist, as it often is in America. In China, context means everything: an individual communicates differently, based upon his or her hierarchical relationship to the speaker.

Meaning is based upon context and nuance, rather than upon literal, surface meanings, as it tends to be in a low-context society such as America. Americans also tend to be very focused on short-term, concrete results, versus a longer time orientation in cultures such as China: in China time is also viewed in a less monochromatic fashion. The past as well as the present and the future must be taken into consideration. This differing time orientation even affects communicating what Americans would.