By Lambe Lamis 
In this globalized and really networked earth of the 21st century, tradition shock is additional common than ever. Pretty much all of us have been uncovered to other cultures, thanks to globalization and the Net. These days, numerous of us reading through this report have been pretty much related, connected, and labored with varied individuals from different cultures using advanced telecommunication equipment or, at the very least, be friend with them on social networks this sort of as confront-ebook and LinkedIn. In brief, we have crossed cultures. We possibly uncovered to or visited or lived in cultures other than ours.
What do we all have in common when we initial crossed a tradition? We have expert society shock, specifically all through the early phase, right before we familiarize ourselves with the new tradition. At this phase, you might ask, what is lifestyle shock? According to Wikipedia, culture shock is the nervousness, emotions of disappointment, alienation and anger that may possibly manifest when a particular person is emplaced in a new tradition.
Why we really feel these symptoms? This is mainly because we haven’t organized for it. We have been nurtured and formed by our tradition in selected strategies and when we are exposed to a lifestyle distinctive from ours, we do not know how to communicate, behave, and do matters in that particular tradition. And consequently, we display the previously mentioned described signals of frustrations.
Of course, the magnitude of the shock may perhaps change. For some of us, it might be 1 or 2 Richter scale although for some of us it could be even bigger such as 7 or 8 or 9 Richter scale. I had that encounter when I was exposed to the cultures of some African nations in the western and southern Africa. I travelled to some African nations though I was a college student leader of Addis Ababa University in 1997/98. I experienced very similar tradition shock, extra than six a long time in the past, in the early times of my keep in the US.
The issue is what we really should do to mitigate lifestyle shock? I explained mitigate for the reason that we simply cannot completely escape some stage of lifestyle shock. For now, I have three ideas. Initial, we need to comprehend the key cultural divide in the entire world. Numerous lifestyle experts agree that the earth cultures can hypothetically be divided into personal-dependent and communal-centered cultures. Most of the western countries this kind of as the US, Canada, and Europe can be categorized underneath individual-centered cultures when cultures in continents these types of as Africa, Asia, and South The usa can be categorized as communal-centered cultures. Of class, we have subcultures in these broader categories. There are also remarkable men and women who could not exhibit all of the capabilities of the society they are dwelling in.
We can look at and distinction these two wide cultures making use of 3 acknowledged parameters suggested by tradition gurus: Context, Time, and Area. Let me just consider one of these indicators and make a comparison. The society we Ethiopians developed up, as a high context tradition, most folks express by themselves and their concepts covertly, implicitly, and non-verbally. Most folks are reserved to specific on their own, and are inward. When I came to the US, I observed the opposite. As a low context society, most Us citizens expressed themselves and their tips overtly, explicitly, and verbally.
2nd, we should really also get time to review and analysis the main characteristics of a presented society prior to we cross it. 3rd, we must also consider some advices from unique adherents who lived in that distinct culture we intend to go to. These approaches, we may well, at the very least, avoid committing lethal cultural offenses, and mitigate the magnitude of the lifestyle shock we may working experience.
In conclusion, society issues. It decides who we would become at the conclude of the day. It can make or breaks us. It releases or binds us. So, we really should have an understanding of the impression of the culture we stay in, and drop all those cultural things that restrain us from progressing and succeeding. We need to also embrace multiculturalism, and produce cross-cultural interaction expertise so that we may mitigate society shock, successfully talk, relate, and work with numerous people today from different cultures.