Reading Between the Lines

From my study abroad experience at Arava Institute and in Israel, which have two very different cultures,  I have experienced a few challenges when communicating with my peers and Israelis.  

A language difference: One of my classmates translating from Arabic to English when the Arava Institute visited a Dead Sea salt factory.  

Even though Israel is a country that is not drastically different from the United States, I experienced what Lary Barna described as culture shock in his essay Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication.  The high anxiety block that I stumbled upon did have mental and physiological repercussions similar to how Barna described.  I missed my family and friends from back home, and I was struggling to figure out how to fix a broken computer in a foreign country.  At first, it did cause me to be antisocial and just stick to my room, but I was able to change my mindset, embrace the differences, and make new friends.  

As part of my Peace-Building and Environmental Leadership Seminar, the institute teaches the students how to engage in respectful, meaningful dialog with each other.  One of these tools for talking and solving conflict is non-violent communication or NVC.  I really enjoyed learning about NVC and have since tried to use pieces of it in both my interactions with people here and back home.  I can also see parts of NVC apply as a good way to avoid two of Barna’s stumbling blocks.  NVC says that all humans have the same needs such as connection, autonomy, meaning, or physical-well being.  Everyone just has different strategies to satisfy his or her needs, and it is in strategies that people clash.  This thought process could be applied to  how Barna described the stumbling block assumption of similarities.  He stated that humans have common biological needs but the adaptations to them differ from culture to culture.  NVC recognizes these common needs and would say that biological needs also include love, acceptance, and joy.  The cultural adaptations to satisfying these needs would be what NVC describes as strategies.  Since everyone from different cultures or from the same culture has different strategies conflict can arise.  People from different cultures might assume that they have similar strategies and that is where assumption of similarities comes in, but their various cultures and backgrounds have led them to adopting different strategies.  Barna says that when misinterpretations happen in intercultural communication they are seldom corrected.  NVC looks to eliminate this mistake.  When someone states how they are feeling, NVC dialog calls for the other person to repeat back to the first speaker what they just heard to make sure they are interpreting what is being said correctly.  

I was also able to apply NVC to Barna’s stumbling block of tendency to evaluate.  Barna says that in order to avoid evaluating and judging others from a different culture, one must look and listen empathically.  NVC also calls for active listening and empathy when interacting with others.  If someone can really listen and understand where the other person is coming from, they are then able to empathize with them even if they do not agree with the person.  When Israelis disagree with each other they outright say what they disagree with and not always in the nicest manner.  In some places in American culture this would be considered rude because it is sometimes better to hold one's tongue or suggest disagreements in a roundabout way in order to be polite.  Israelis perceive this as passive aggressive.  At first I did evaluate this Israeli behavior as rude, but I now realize that neither the American or Israeli way is right or wrong.  It is just a matter of different cultures.