Page 228 - Cultures and Organizations

What Is Different Is Dangerous 201

and polluting are things that do not fit our usual frameworks of thinking,
our normal classifi cations. 15
Dirt and danger are not limited to matter. Feelings of dirty and dan-
gerous can also be held about people. Racism is bred in families. Children
learn that persons from a particular category are dirty and dangerous.
They learn to avoid children from social, ethnical, religious, or political
out-groups as playmates.
Ideas too can be considered dirty and dangerous. Children in their
families learn that some ideas are good and others taboo. In some cultures
the distinction between good and evil ideas is sharp. There is a concern
about Truth with a capital T. Ideas that differ from this Truth are danger-
ous and polluting. Little room is left for doubt or relativism.
The stronger systems of rules and norms in strongly uncertainty-
avoiding societies make children more often feel guilty and sinful. In fact,
the education process in high-UAI societies develops in its children stron-
ger superegos (the concept was developed by Sigmund Freud in high-UAI
Austria). Children in these societies are more likely to learn that the world
is a hostile place and are more likely to be protected from experiencing
unknown situations.
Weak uncertainty- avoidance cultures also have their classifi cations as

to dirt and danger, but these classifications are less precise and more likely

to give the benefit of the doubt to unknown situations, people, and ideas.

In these societies rules are more flexible, superegos are weaker, the world
is pictured as basically benevolent, and experiencing novel situations is
encouraged.
The less-flexible system of rules and norms for children in stronger

uncertainty- avoiding cultures is also reflected in language. Data about the
structure of languages presented by Kashima and Kashima, whose work

we met in Chapter 4, show that languages in uncertainty- avoiding cultures
more often have different modes of address for different persons, like tu
and vous in French. Children learning such languages face more choices
according to tight cultural rules. Languages in lower UAI cultures tend to
have fewer such rules. 16
The strong uncertainty- avoidance sentiment can be summarized by the
credo of xenophobia: “What is different is dangerous.” The weak uncertainty-
avoidance sentiment, on the contrary, is: “What is different is curious.”