Transcript
2.47 Inside vs. Outside: The Cultural Understanding Debate
Waseem: Welcome back to Third Culture Convos, the podcast where we explore the intricacies of growing up in multiple cultures and bridging the gaps between them. In today’s episode, we’re trying something a little different. We’ll present a fictional debate between two characters with opposing views on a thought-provoking question.
Can one truly understand a culture without being a part of it or growing up? Inside it. As Third Culture Kids, this topic is near and dear to our hearts. So join us as we navigate this captivating conversation, examining the merits of each argument and delving into the complexities of cultural understanding.
Let’s dive right into the debate and see what’s inside that we can uncover.
So I’m gonna kick off this debate. All right? Okay. By these two fictional characters. Dr. Amelia Hart and Dr. Raj Nayer. All right. Okay opening statements first. Dr. Amelia Hart. Thank you. I believe that it’s possible to truly understand a culture without being part of it or growing up in it. In my experience as an anthropologist, I have witnessed individuals from different cultural backgrounds immerse themselves in new cultures, learn the language, customs and traditions, and develop a deep appreciation understanding of the culture.
Through empathy, open-mindedness, and a genuine willingness to learn, one can gain profound insights into any culture. Dr. Raj Nayer response. I appreciate your perspective, Dr. Hart, but I must respectfully disagree. Cultural understanding goes beyond learning the language, customs and traditions. It involves being raised in the culture, experiencing the subtle nuances, and understanding the underlying values and belief systems.
These are things that can only be truly grasped by someone who has lived within the culture since childhood. No matter how open-minded or empathetic one might be. There will always be a level of understanding that remains out of reach for outsiders. Dr. Amelia Hart response. I understand your point, Dr.
Nayer, but I would like to emphasize the importance of immersion and adaptation. When individuals immerse themselves in a culture for an extended period, they can develop a deep understanding of its intricacies. They may not have experienced every aspect of the culture since childhood, but their commitment to learning and engaging with locals can lead to a level of understanding that rivals that, of someone who was raised within that culture.
Dr. Raja Nyer responds, Dr. Hart. While immersion and adaptation are certainly important, I believe that there is a distinct difference between understanding a culture and truly experiencing it growing up in a culture, shapes and individual’s thoughts, emotions, and reactions in ways that can never be replicated by someone who has only observed or studied the culture.
One mile one may learn to appreciate and respect the culture from the outside, but the deep emotional connection and inherent understanding that comes from being part of that culture cannot be duplicated. Dr. Amelia Hart responds. I see where you’re coming from, Dr. Nayer, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that cultures are not static.
They evolve and change over time, influenced by internal factors and external. Interactions. An individual who is raised within a culture may find that their understanding of it becomes outdated or incomplete over time. While someone who is dedicated to learning about and engaging with the culture on an ongoing basis may develop a more current and comprehensive understanding.
And Dr. Naja Raja Nyer responds. That’s a valid point, Dr. Hart, but I still maintain that there is a core understanding of a culture that can only be obtained by those who have been a part of it from the beginning. The emotional, psychological, and experiential connections that come from being raised within a culture form the foundation for a deeper level of understanding that cannot be acquired through observation or study alone.
Thank you for this argument, and I’m looking forward to learning more about it. Rashid? Yeah. Who are you with? Who you with? Are you with Dr. Amelia? Are you with Dr. Rashish?
Rashed: Can I, am I allowed to be on the fence?
Waseem: No. I think you gotta pick a side, man, and then maybe at the end of the conversation you can change your mind.
But I think you gotta pick aside
Rashed: so my initial. My initial impulse is to agree with Dr. Raj because of the fact that I agree in the sense that you can only truly understand a culture unless you’ve actually grown up within it and be a part of that culture instead of coming from the outside and putting yourself into it.
It’s a similar argument that I’ve made in the past with friends of mine where I used to get into a lot of polemic arguments, religious polemic, arg arguments. I mean at first they would be like, which one’s the right religion? Which when I’m like, I don’t deal with that crap. Like religion is religion and it speaks to everyone in different ways, in each religion, speaks differently to different people.
It’s not, I don’t believe in one big, true religion, Thunderbolt, I don’t know, but whatever. And that’s also me cuz I, grew up within various religious traditions. But my argument within that sphere was in order to fully understand what a religion says about itself, what its Holy Book says about itself, and in this case, what a culture, how a culture perceives itself and perceives its people and its purpose.
And it’s traditions and it’s shared history amongst its people. You have to understand the subtle nuances of that culture. And in order to be able to do that, you really have to be born with it and basically live within that culture from when you’re born as a baby. And then the thing is we pick up so many things by osmosis, just by being in an atmosphere in a general place.
Observing the el the adults, the elders and subtle subtle phrases in a different language and that kind of stuff. So for, I was reading I was reading something yesterday and it was freaking hilarious because it was Egyptian idioms and how like they u they basically did it where it was a an employee putting in the letter of resignation.
But it was the English translations of Egyptian sayings. And they’re stupid in English, but they make sense in Egyptian. So I’d actually, I had to research the actual phrases in Arabic. I actually don’t know them. The trans, like the literal translations. The literal translations, like so example.
And with Arabic’s, there’s plenty of those. Yeah. The, like there, there’s one that was like, there’s people living in our neck and it’s just What the hell does that mean? Then you look, then you reread it in Arabic. You’re like, oh, okay. Makes sense. Like it’s basically saying that, I I have to provide for people.
Come on man. There’s people like around my neck type of, I let give Itk Yeah. On my neck. Exactly. So and then so the thing is that’s one of those things where you won’t actually understand what that means unless you actually live in that culture from when you’re a child and hear it over and over again in different context, in, in the context in which it’s used, and then you can really understand what’s going on.
Whereas if you’re coming in from the outside, you have to sit there, you hear that, you’re like, what the hell does that mean? For example, actually, I’m gonna have to ask this of my Greek friends. There’s one thing where the equivalent of in the Egyptian, where like the door can fit a camel as in get outta here.
Yeah. And then there’s an equivalent in Greek apparently where basically says hit the road. The dogs are tied. So you’re not gonna get, you’re, the road is safe. You need to leave now. You’re no long, no longer. Welcome to we, we’ve tied up the dogs. That’s yeah. So stray dogs are knocking.
Waseem: But even in English, right? Hit the road is a, yeah. Is a you translate that into Arabic. You’re like, why would you want to hit the road
Rashed: cave
Waseem: or whatever. What does that even mean? And Oh no, it means, and but you could.
Rashed: Killed two birds with one stone.
Why are you killing birds? What did they ever do? Yeah. What are you trying to do? Shit outta your window. And
Waseem: and there’s plenty of films of, right? Like of, there’s plenty of films of taking the, the person from the outside of the country and then bringing them into that country.
But I think what the sort of, the argument that that Dr. Raja is making is that is your argument, so you’re leaning in towards this direction in terms of Yeah. Being like you’re not gonna know that. And, but I think what Dr. Amelia’s saying is that you can learn it.
Like you can go and you can learn it. You spend a bit of time, right? Like even now you just told, like you just shared a, an idiom or a metaphor. And then we were able to to. Know it and so now I know it and like how can I appreciate the cultural sort of nuance in it. It’s from day one, probably not, but, and I think this is probably where Dr.
Amelia’s point is the strongest and might actually, what actually made me stop and think was the. The nature of culture is changing over time. When you grow up in a culture, you have no other reference point outside of that culture. So it’s normal. It’s let so it’s normal with and you d.
You can’t reference it against something else, unless of course your third culture and you’ve traveled a bunch, like growing up, and so then you’re like, oh wow, they do it this way here and then they do it this way here. And very early on you get all of these there’s not only one way, even though to you there’s only one way to grow up, which is to travel a lot.
Like there’s, you can’t imagine what it would be like to not be traveling a lot when you’re growing up. And so the changing over time bit. That a culture changes over time. If you grew up in only the one culture, you may not appreciate the changes that it makes over time, you could be stuck in the past in terms of the understanding of your culture, especially as 20, 30, 40 years it may have, it may change dramatically.
Rashed: The best example I can illustrate for that would be, for example People like my parents’ generation, for example, who left the Middle East and came to Canada and really never went back often enough to understand the changes that happened, excellent. But what ends up happening is they still think of life back in the old country as it was when they left.
And then there was always this thing where they always compare the lifestyle in Canada, for example, and say how it’s so bad. It’s not like this back home. And I’m like you do realize things have changed. It Like when my father left Naus after the 67 war. After the six day war, you honestly believe that in 2023, Naus is the same city.
It does it’s not. It’s changed. Historically, Naus is a conservative city. It probably still is. But there’s a lot of changes that would’ve happened that he doesn’t know about, that the youth are probably doing that. He probably would make his head explode, yeah. Yeah.
Waseem: The changing nature of a place.
Rashed: Yeah. And that’s and that’s related to what the anthropologist Amelia would be saying in that the evolution of cultures and realities. Is influenced by different factors. And one of those factors obviously would be factors from the outside of outside cultures leaving an imprint on your culture.
But the thing is, if you’re living within that over time, you won’t realize necessarily what’s actually been changed. Or if you are, if you’re born so let’s say, in a hypothetical fantasy world, I had a child and my child grew up in. Grew up in this evolving culture that I just didn’t realize.
It ended up changing and evolving because why would I notice that I’m an adult, I have other things to worry about, but this child is born into the differences that I never realized. And you’re like what’s wrong with these stupid kids these days? All the time, all the generation. What’s wrong with these stupid kids?
Back in my day, we did X, Y, Z, and now these kids are like doing whatever. It’s things have changed, like video games, for example. It’s one of the things that changes the culture of video games. Like for me, growing up video, I was at the beginning of video games. So I remember, I have a vague recollection of the Atari system and then the transition into the original Nintendo.
I’m old.
Waseem: No, but this is the birth, the video gaming. Like video gaming as you know it. And it’s only our generation. I’m like, I’m right behind you. So I got, I’m right in the Nintendo, like I was playing Nintendo when I was five years old. And the birth of the it’s a good example because the birth of the video gaming system of that, if you were around before that, it’s such, it’s foreign to you.
And ah, all the kids are playing video games these days. And, but my attitude, like my attitude with my kids to video games is. Like totally different from let’s say my parents’ attitude or people that grew up without video games. I like because they didn’t exist. Yeah.
Maybe not necessarily because like they didn’t, they existed but you didn’t have access to them is one thing, but they didn’t exist and so then when they do exist and you get the sort of generations to catch up. And so now I’m like, oh yeah, you could totally play video games. There’s nothing like my attitude towards video games is not that, like they’re all bad, therefore he shouldn’t be playing them and he’s sitting at home playing video games all day.
There is a limit like almost everything. But my initial thing is is in regards to that, is in regards to like that, that,
Rashed: So you think for that is, is for like the generation that started with video games. Let’s just stick with this for a few minutes. They learned how to police themselves because they went from living a lifestyle where it’s just get our bikes, go out and play go to ride your bikes to the valley and do stupid shit as a kid and whatever it is, type of thing.
Then these video games come out and you play. But the thing is that you’re not used to doing it from when you’re a younger age, cuz a lot of these people, let’s just say that the video games came out and they were 10 or 11. So before that, they were used to playing outside all the time, doing stuff outside.
Their attention span probably gets so low to the point where I don’t wanna do this anymore, let’s go back outside. So they learned how to police themselves over time. But then our generation with our kids, those kids, a lot of those kids. I’m just gonna say not everyone, but a lot of those kids started with an iPad in their face.
So they don’t know that difference between being outside and then coming in, playing and then getting bored of it and going back out. Everything that they know is electronic. Yeah, it’s all digital. It’s this. So then the parents have to learn how to police that, and that’s where the limits come into play.
So that’s the difference I would say, in terms of an evolution of a part of a cultural evolution in the sense of how people as kids spend their time. Yeah. But then there’s other things too an old roommate of mine, her father’s gone back to Vietnam for the first time in 20 plus years, and Vietnam has changed a lot in 20 years.
Yeah. And so he’s posting stuff on Facebook. He does street photography and all that. Just like amateur street photography and just reading what he says about how things have changed since he was there last. Part of it is another culture shock cuz you left that country, you were born and raised in that country, but you left under different pretenses.
So for him, he would’ve left when there’s a lot of upheaval happening in Vietnam. Now he goes back Vietnam, it’s fairly stable. But now it’s happening In Vietnam for example, there’s a lot of outside influence from Russian investment. So now like the Russians are really heavily influencing what’s happening in Vietnam in terms of business and economy and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, even still, even if you were born somewhere, you grew up there, you leave for a certain amount of time and you go back. It’s almost like you are that person the anthropologist is talking about. Cause now you’re ersing yourself in a culture that you thought you knew, but now it’s changed and.
You have to learn everything all over again. Can you,
Waseem: so the question, this is what our original debate was is that can you learn it after having been away from it for that long? Is that even possible? Because now you’re on Dr. Amelia’s side. Like now you’re
Rashed: arguing for, here’s the thing.
Because now it’s in a sense, so it’s almost a hy for me it is a hybrid because to understand nuances, In subtleties of a culture, I feel like you have to be born in that culture and live there long enough, but then to be able to understand and appreciate the culture and understand its evolution, I think it’s easier coming from the outside in cuz you have a different reference point to compare it to.
So you’re coming from somewhere else. You’re coming into this culture, you already have this bias of something else that exists. And now you’re coming in and you’re observing what this new culture is that you’re sitting within and you’re like, okay, so they do this like this, and they, but on the other side they do this, like that type of thing.
It’s a tough debate because what do you really, they both have merit, both arguments have their own merit. But the thing is that as we always, as we know, life is not static. Experiences are not static. Everything is in constant flux. So I can’t stick to one side because I can see both. Yeah.
But you have to choose.
Waseem: There’s no learning. If you don’t choose, you gotta choose. You can change your mind. You could choose a
Rashed: today, you can change your mind over time. You can
Waseem: totally change, but you gotta choose that, that’s what makes it fun.
Rashed: And the ability to, I know, but there, there’s so many topics, there’s so many topics within it that you can say, he’s right.
And she’s right. Exactly.
Waseem: But you gotta choose, right? And this the subtleties which one did you choose? This ties to the convers I’ve done. Okay. The, I had initially, just like you, I initially, I was pretty solid in, in Dr. Rogers’s. Court I was like, yo, there’s the only way you could truly understand it.
And for the same arguments that you said, you gotta be a part of it. If there’s some subtleties that you’re not gonna understand you can’t just come in and bring it. But then Dr. Amelia’s points and as I sat and thought about it, and then even now, your points that you j that you just mentioned, which was like, when you go back you’re leading with a new culture and having the subtle understandings from the old.
Culture that you were a part of that now you’ve taken a break from and then you come back, actually hinders your ability to understand the new culture as is, as opposed to helps you understand it. Possibly. And so I’m now more and more surprised, surprisingly, in Dr. Amelia’s corn. I’m like, admittedly, I’m very surprised that I think because I was pretty sure I was pretty like, yeah, man, you gotta know it.
And maybe the reason why I say that also is a sense of a when you’re part of a club, like there’s a feeling that you don’t, that like I’m part of the club and so there’s an exclusivity that comes from being a part of a club and that actually strokes your ego, because I’m a part of that club and I can draw a differentiation between me and someone.
So there’s an, there’s a little bit of ego that comes into play by being an exclusive member. Exclusive membership, everybody loves exclusive membership. Okay. I’m a member, I’m a member, I’m a member. And so I, I think that I would I initially, I lent towards Dr. Raj because I.
My ego appreciated the exclusivity of that understanding, cuz then only I could understand or me and my people could understand like Arab culture as an example.
Rashed: And the thing is that, but here’s the thing that sends me back to Raje, Dr. Rajesh, would be something that you’re getting into right now.
How many times have you. Have had to try and explain, just say a particular word in Arabic that doesn’t necessarily exist in English to a non-Arabic speaker. For them to understand what that word actually means. Because the thing is, we talk about nuances, again, could be one word and use various contexts.
I spend a lot of my time on Google Translate cuz something pops in my head and usually it’s like languages related to Arabic or French Spanish, Greek, whatever it is. And I’m like, oh, I wonder what this word means. And I type in the word and then I get a list of different translations and I’m like, what the hell?
Like, how can it have all these different translations for this one? Same word meaning. So the thing for me is that in this, in the sense that with what Dr. Rajesh would be saying is that you don’t fully understand a culture unless you are a part of that culture, because then you can. Understand the subtleties of this one particular word that, for example, like that would give you some kind of comfort, let’s just say.
Like there are times when I hear Arabic and it gives me some kind of comfort because it reminds me of my childhood. Okay, fine. And then certain phrases and certain words reminds me of a certain situation or a certain individual, whatever it is. So for me that’s a part of the tipping point when it comes to going on to onto.
side because of the fact that there are those subtle nuances that yeah, you could try and immerse yourself into a culture and it could be explained to you what this word means in this context and how it matters. But unless you have understood this from when you’re a child, I don’t feel like you’ll fully grasp the actual meaning of it, if that makes any sense.
I
Waseem: hear you, but what I’m saying, a and what I’m saying on top of that is that literally the feeling that you get let’s say the feeling of satisfaction that you get in understanding it like from the inside without having needing it to be explained to you is the, is the very thing that.
Prevents you from accepting Dr. Amelia’s Yes. Position. Yes. And, but that feeling of satisfaction, what I’m, I am positing is that it’s a the feeling of satisfaction serves your ego and not necessarily the reality or the OB objective reality of knowing the culture because. I wanna say similar to supporting a sports team. I like, if you have a, like a life, like you’re a Jay’s fan and you’re a Blue Jays fan, you’re a diehard Blue Jays fan. You’re a part of the group, and then somebody comes and moves to Toronto and the Blue Jays are in the World Series, and then there’s a bandwagon of supporters, the joy.
And you go, yeah, but you guys aren’t real supporters. You’re bandwagon supporters. And that argument.
Rashed: Serves your ego. I’ve been there, I’ve done that many a times. Of course you have. And
Waseem: which is why it’s it’s relative. And so that argument actually serves your ego because they’re, and here’s where I would argue, like they’re just as much as a fan as you are, even if they are just bandwagon fans, right?
Rashed: It’s similar to, so for example in terms of football supporting Liverpool and Liverpool has become a huge club in the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The Liverpool within itself is not as necessarily a huge city in a sense, like its population is like 400,000 people, whatever, like the actual city of Liverpool.
But there is this pervading theme within local Liverpool supporters as well in Liverpool who are like, they’re annoyed about the tourist fan who comes. Buys tickets for stupid prices, wants to sit low in, in Anfield and isn’t watching the game. They have their phone out, they’re recording what’s going on, and they’re like, you’re not true fans.
When I was in my, when I was in my teens, I was in the cup and I was singing my freaking heart out and blah, blah, blah. I like so I’m on the flip side of what you just described as Yeah. As being like, consider myself as a diehard Jason. Fan. I grew up in a city. I’m from there. Like I’ve watched all the bullshit.
Yeah. And I watched all the winning and the same thing could be, and then I’m that person on the other side when it comes to Liverpool. But it’s just yeah, but you never for, I may never get there. You’re lucky to live there and you can get to a match. I never, I’ve been to one and I don’t think I’ll ever get to one ever again in my life.
Which is, for me, it’s unfortunate, but whatever. But I can understand that part of it. But now that now we’re going into this concept of like tribalism.
Waseem: Yeah. I would call it a hierarchy of like of under cultural understanding. Like it is, and it is very much so like that. And I think it’s astute that you brought up that word.
Because, and that’s where Dr. Ka Rais comes into play is like where do you draw the line between understanding it but then also saying that you can’t understand it cuz you are not in the group. Because I have the privileged position of being in the group. And so I can tell you that you’re not gonna get it.
Because I’m in it versus Dr. Amelia being like if I sat and I tried, then I really came at it with an open understanding, open dialogue. I like open ears, open hearts, open minds that I can
Rashed: see, here’s the thing. So one of the things that I find as well, when it comes to really understanding a culture and it’s reality and how it perceives itself.
Excuse me. This concept of generational trauma. So you being born and growing up within a specific culture, you naturally take on the historical trauma of this culture. It’s historical events and events that would’ve been traumatic or events that would’ve been, considered a success, for example.
And if you’re just, Putting yourself into the culture without really knowing those events or having experienced those events through the elders, quote unquote. Again, there’s a barrier there to really fully understand what the culture is, right? Because you always hear, there’s always stories from the older generation that talks about whatever happened this time and whatever happened that time, or, there was war and we had to hide and then.
You hear these stories as a kid and then you, it starts to you start to get this emotional attachment to these events that you never experienced yourself. I’ll give you an example. There is a b BBC documentary that I started watching recently, and it’s called The Holy Land in Us. And what it is it’s British British Jews and British Palestinians.
And what they’re basically doing is they’re retracing what happened to their families. After leading up to and after the War of Israel’s independence. So you have this one person, he’s he’s a barrister slash he, he’s basically a TV judge in England. So his family originally was from Poland. They ended up settling in in London.
So his family’s on the Jewish side and there is this other, there are a few different families on the Palestinian side. This one girl, for example, her ancestors were basically the guardians, the custodians of a few different villages in the Galilee. And her one great-great-grandfather was well-documented in what his major purpose for a long time when he was running the Galilee was to protect the three religious communities from the Ottomans and from like thieves on, on, on the trade routes and all that kind of stuff.
The thing for them is that they even, they have a certain trauma related to their family’s experiences despite the fact of not living where their families came from. So in that sense, I wouldn’t say that they’re being they’re coming from the outside into a culture because, and they have the hybrid of that culture being explained to them.
And like they can still pick up those emotions related to events that happened in the past. That were highly traumatic to, to people. So obviously on, on the Jewish side this individual’s family his parent, his grandparents and part of his family ended up surviving Auschwitz just by, by chance cuz they were sent to Auschwitz just as the war was ending.
And then the people who fled places like Darius, for example from the Massacre and Darius scene and others who just ended up in Jordan somehow as refugees from the Palestinian side ended up in England and all that kind of stuff. So there’s even an element where if you don’t necessarily live in a specific geographic location, you can still pick up those nuances and those traumatic events in the past from the elders, quote unquote.
And again, that comes down to language. Cause a lot of that stuff is passed down. And, the family’s perceived mother tongue. So you all, you’ll always hear the stories in Arabic, and I’m like, Ooh. Like for me to hear it in Arabic makes more sense than hearing it in English, let’s just say.
Waseem: And maybe that’s also one of those big barriers to, to Amelia’s dis to maybe to or like a caveat to Amelia’s discussion where it’s. You need to learn the language first. Yeah. In order to learn the culture, right? And there’s no separating language and culture when it comes to learning about a group of people.
And by being born in a culture you. You learn the language quite fast obviously, cuz that’s the language that you learn. And actually this is why, it’s also interesting when you, like, when some people grow up bilingual or trilingual even, it’s be, and that gives them the ability to build bridges between cultures because they could see that that connection way more. But then they would probably also be on, in dr. Amelia’s side on this one and at least. This. So this is actually where I’m finally landing, which is on Dr. Emilia’s side. I’m with her in the sense that knowing different languages and knowing different knowing different language has allowed me to learn different cultures but also cultures that I don’t like, that I am, I’m not immersed in, and I don’t necessarily know their language.
I can at least understand the limits of my knowing. But for the cultures that I do know, if I did learn the language, like if I really did like to sit down and spent the took the time and to learn the language, I would have a key into and immerse myself in the culture.
I would have a key into a cultural understanding that I could get it. Like I believed that I could get it that I could understand that culture having. With my evidence, being my own life and having, let’s say, the keys to different cultures. So I have the keys to an English culture, the keys to an Arabic culture.
So I’ve been abled to understand those things even though I grew up in both those cultures. So it’s still maybe learning at 35 or 37 or 40 or 45 or 50 is different from learning at five and 10 and 15. But you do have. More nuance to understand at 40, 45, 50 than you do at five and 10.
And so it’s a different kind of knowing,
Rashed: It’s almost like being a jack of all trades in a sense. Did I think for me, when it comes to really understanding a culture, is it language is the biggest, is it’s the largest factor in my mind. And in terms of how language is stored in your brain.
The language center has basically it’s almost 90% of your language center is solely for the purpose of your mother tongue. So all the information, all the data, all of the understanding of grammar, all that stuff is like 90% of your language center. The final 10% is everything else that you learn outside of that.
So let’s just say that you are fluent in five languages, and if English is your mother tongue, it takes up 90% of your language center. The 10% will be the other four languages, which is why a lot of people end up getting mixed up between languages when they’re, or they can pop into a language quicker than they normally would.
So for example, I find when I’m in, in a non-English speaking part of the world My non-English languages pop up really fast because now my brain is thinking non-English. And then like words that I didn’t even know that I knew end up popping up in Arabic for example. I’m like, where the hell did that word come from?
Or Greek? I’m like, I don’t know. And then I start making those connections between the different languages. But I feel like. Just because of the nature of language and how language is learned, it still remains a hindrance to fully understanding a culture that you immerse yourself into because you can learn what the nuances are of a language.
You can learn what people might mean in different situations, but. I still feel like there will always be a wall between you and being able to fully understand what that person who was born in that culture actually fully understands. So
Waseem: you’re still, you’re with Dr. Raja still?
Rashed: All right. And a lot of it is based on language. It’s not necessarily based on understanding the society as a whole. Because I can understand Dr. Amelia’s understanding when it comes to. Understanding the greater culture and society. But for me, a lot of it comes down to the emotional aspect of being in a culture.
And a lot of it comes for me, comes from language. I think I’m
Waseem: gonna shoot this. Now back to our listener. We just had a very interesting discussion about and I would, I’d like you to choose, I’d like you to choose, are you Dr, are you with Dr. Rogers’s argument or are you with Dr. Amelia’s argument?
Which one do you vi? And you gotta pick, and I know it you wanna see the, especially as a third culture kid, you want to see the merit in both sides. And you wanna wishy wash in the middle and you but I will put you in a point where you have to choose if only just for now, and you’re free to change your mind.
I just, in closing, I want to thank you all for tuning into this unique episode of Third Culture Convos where we explored this fictional debate between Dr. Raj and Dr. Amelia on whether you can truly understand a culture without being a part of it or growing up in it. I hope that this conversation sparked some thought and reflection on your own experiences and perspectives as third culture kid kids, and let us know in the comments if which one you chose, which one do you chose, and did you change your mind as a result of this conversation.
Remember, our goal is to bridge cultural gaps and build connections between people from all walks of life. As always please. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this debate and your own experiences with cultural understanding. Don’t forget to follow us on social media and share your thoughts with the third Culture compost community.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share with your fans, friends, and family. Join us next time for another engaging conversation on the nuances and challenges of growing up in multiple cultures. And until then, take care and keep exploring the beautiful complexities that make our world so diverse and connected.
Peace peace.