Multi-Cultural Influences on US Society : 1. Introduction

'Sea Foam
After Early Winter Storm
On the Atlantic Ocean,
16-20 ft waves,
winds to 55 knots NNW'

Atlantic City, NJ,
November, 2003



'Baby Boomers' who went to college in the 2nd half of the 20th Century will remember the cross-cultural dichotomies presented in early lectures in most liberal arts subject areas. The US was characterized as classical, individual, literate, reasoned, restrained, platonic or sensual, democratic, a part of the great Western Civilization which had led humanity out from the darkness, despair, ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, pestilence, famine of the Dark Ages of the 4th-6th Centuries AD.

The US and European Western Civilization was thereby distinguished from the East, exotic, tribal or primitive, pictographic, unrestrained, sexual, arbitrary, dynastic, influenced by China and a succession of Eastern dynasties and dictatorships or disorganized and chaotic.

Unfortunately, the West was identified with the 'male' and the other with the 'female', alienating to many women Baby Boomers who went to college to succeed, other than or in addition to achieving the 'MRS. degree'.

Now even the terms which describe historical time are being challenged. The Greco-Roman traditions preceding the Holy Roman Empire, Europe, and the Christian roots of Western Civilization are preserved in the letters BC ('Before Christ') and AD ('Anno Domini' or 'Year of Our Lord'). Some scholars seeking to break the Judeo-Christian organizational timeline have proposed the alternate term 'CE', 'Common Era', (also 'Christian Era', or 'Current Era' for 'AD').

The dialectic is being challenged in the West and East by the impetus to international trade. Domestic financial stress in the East and the West, has produced a very aggressive, ruthless, profit-driven phase. Accompanying international trade is a more invasive phase of trying to influence the society and government of traders. The loose use of terms like 'trade partners' brings a
sense of pulling such partners too close, too far into the other culture. Each side tries to get a 'better deal' from a friend by utilizing more interpersonal psychological manipulations or techniques. This involves the use of interpersonal techniques, on personal levels in businesses, on national and international levels.

The psychological differences among people of different cultures has had a profound influence on US society. These differences influence psychiatry, and the economy which has grown around psychiatry as part of the social-welfare industry.

See the next blog in this series for a discussion of these issues.

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Graphic: An Original Photographic of 'Sea Foam, After Early Winter Storm on the Atlantic Ocean, 15-20 ft waves, winds up to 55 knots', Atlantic City, NJ, November, 2003, copyright mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com.