“Cultural Competence” training
has a long and now increasingly irrelevant history of
teaching people knowledge about another culture.
So then, how do we fit in the world as it is?
Here is how not to do it.
"Cultural Competence" has a long and now increasingly irrelevant history of teaching people knowledge about another culture.
Imagine constantly meeting people from a random set of a dozen cultures.
If you rely on "Cultural Competence," you have three problems. First, if you become "culturally competent" with people from China, you have zero competence with people from India. Are we supposed to "know" hundreds of cultures?
Second, how much can you "know" about another culture compared to people from that culture? We may be more "culturally competent" compared to a compatriot who is not an expert in a "foreign" culture, but are we experts compared to a child from that culture?
Finally, cultures are not static; they are dynamic. And, we do not create cultures with nouns; we assert them with verbs. It follows that eavesdropping on two people engaged in an "inter-cultural" relationship is like listening to speeches by ambassadors at the United Nations, not like listening to a conversation.
So, now that Globalization has redefined proximity, Cultural Competence does not help you fit in the world as it is. That takes "global agility."
A globally agile person has mastered the cultural dimensions
in which we humans define our similarities and differences.