Does culture matter?

To be able to answer this question one has to ask himself what culture is? There is probably a very good explanation on Wikipedia that I don't care to read. To me culture can be defined as the thought model that governs how one acts and reacts to things in the outer world. Or even better that governs how people think other will think and thus acts according to how they believe others will react.

Let me take one simple example. How close to the other person do you stand when having a conversation? In Sweden it's about 60-80 cm while in India I've been told it's less than 30 cm. The story goes that one Swede and one Indian had a discussion. The Indian tried to keep the distance of 30 cm while the Sweden moved away to keep the 80 cm. The were basically dancing backwards across the room. Very funny!!!

In groups of people with the same or very similar culture society is starving on input and new thoughts. Since everyone is acting according to how they believe everyone else would expect them to act no or very few new thoughts and ideas emerges. Whereas in groups of people with many different people from all over the world (or at least with a vast different background) there are always people able to see things that others miss because of their cultural filter.

This is way large groups in the world have such big problems. Arabic countries have very little input from other parts of the world. In China the Han-people are very homogeneous and up until very recently have not had much influence from abroad. Other parts are experiencing very dramatic idea generation and are very creative. Look at Europe for example with its large set of cultures and value systems. There has always been one part of Europe that has seen a new thing that was in the blind-spot for the others. The same for the east and west coast of US. A lot of immigrants from all over the world have created a boiling cacophony of ideas and values. You can see how many great companies that originates from these places.

The threat however to both Europe and US are xenophobia. Becoming afraid of strangers and stopping them from entering is major threat to this process. In the US they are trying to limit the number of green cards and foreign students. In Europe we're closing our borders and in almost every country there is a national party trying to get rid of foreigners to different degrees.

I believe it is of utterly importance that we keep US and Europe open to new people and new ideas. China and the Arabic countries has to follow and create a better mix of people, cultures and values to be able to boil a new soup for the future.