Communication across Communication across BordersBorders

The Dialectic of Paradoxes The Dialectic of Paradoxes and Questions of Identity, and Questions of Identity,

Culture, and Culture, and CommunicationCommunication

Mohammad Essawi (Ph.D)

Al Qasemi AcademyCollege of Education

Baqa Al Qarbia

Technological Advancements

Paradoxical Reality

Crossing borders amongst cultures while highlighting value contradictions and therefore cultural borders

again

Highlighting the gaps

Crossing borders

Ambivalence

TrueTrue

InternationalInternational

FunctionalFunctional

PublicPublic

ProductiveProductive

RealReal

False

National

Aesthetic

Private

Consumptive

Imitative

Questions of Identity, Existence, Time, Destiny, and

Communication

A shared cultural heritage and quality of life

Or

1st World, 3rd World Clashes

Meeting the needs of an Advanced Society: Communication, Business,

Industry and Leisure

Or

Controlling the Unaware Massive Market of the Consuming Countries by

Creating False Needs?

Only 15% of the world’s population controls 85% of the world’s

resources:

Q: Are those who consume and those who produce the technology ethically responsible?

Q: Is there advancement from false needs towards authentic humane cultural change?

Q: Are technological spaces platform for spreading knowledge or platforms for political and

economic hegemonies ?

Q: Can those looking for the food afford to raise the emblems of human

rights ?

Q: Do those looking for the food have the tools to use technology for human

development?

The illusion of a Global Village

Conflicts of Values amongst Cultures

The digital gap

Human rights

the 80's

the 50's

2nd World War

Economic security

Physical security

Human rights

the 80's

the 50's

2nd World War

Economic

security

Physical security

Universal values

(human rights,

freedom,civil

dialogue)

Home and community

Values

Patriotic Values

InnovationWomen's status

ExposureRelating to othersCollective (tribal)

cultureIndividual cultureFreedom of choice

Accessibility to knowledge

Human rightsFreedomEquality

Why do we need to move from A to B?

How can we move from A to B?

A reality of paradoxes and gaps A

BProcesses of reducing gaps in resources and approaching a core of universal values

What do we need to make the change?

Who is responsible for enabling the movement to happen?

Why do we need to move from A to B?

Terrorism in the name of God-

Wars in the name of democracy

Are these enough to provide answers to the questions above?

The immunity and peace of all societies in the world depends on reducing gaps

between cultures and minimizing frustration on collective and individual

levels .

 

                    

              

               

                 

             

How do we How do we move:move:

-From faith to choice?

-From consuming to producing?

-From dogmatism to multi-dimensional thought?

In Developing Societies

a

-From tradition to modernity?

In Advanced Societies

How do we move from patronism to symmetric

relation with the other?

From controlling resources to being ethically responsible for the other’s humane development

Ethical responsibility

Universal core

Social Agenda

Leadership

Universal leadership

Local leadership

3 Ns:

Envision

Energize

Enable

Strategy: HRD

Unless the human resources development of developing societies take place, gaps among cultures will not be reduced and therefore the immunity of the international community will not be achieved

Freedom

Human Rights

Knowledge

Empowering women

Strategy: Education and the Study of Religions and

Humanities

Educational systems, particularly in the humanities, that are guided by the principles of human rights.

Religious studies that are based on critical thinking, comparison with other cultures, questioning, critical thinking and awareness of difference

Crisis

Personal, local, national, universal

Confrontation of values

Supporting environment

Energies (objection, anger, denial)

inequilibriumequilibrium

New set of values Staff members as

agents of change

The Concept of Confrontation of Values for Managing the Change

Culture/Values

Changing Environment

Base

Internal Environm

ent of cultural values

Trunk

Basic Assumptions (Schein, 1985)

Values

Norms

Behavior,Symbols and

Artifacts

Processes of change are usually situations of crisis that raise resistance.

The leadership must have the tools and built in mechanism to manage crisis and the resistance and channels to released energies.

When success starts to show, those who resisted join the success and aspire to the quality of life that it provides

A religious Jewish lecturer wearing a skull cap teaching in an Islamic college. The first day he hides his cap. Towards the middle of the year, he receives a kosher present at Passover from the Moslem young women he teaches.

Music lessons in the college started few years ago some hundreds of meters from the college—the voice of women shouldn’t be allowed to be heard. Some years later, the same group of female students chant in front of families and community in the graduation ceremony.

The problematics of ‘accepting the different’. Is accepting the difference of a shepherd living in poverty, married to four wives and having ten children, though plays the flute happily, ethically responsible?

Can those living in poverty be symmetric partners in true dialogue between cultures?

Minimizing gaps between cultures is the precondition for effective dialogue.

Dialogue forums must be platforms for projects of human resource development in the developing societies and developing ethical responsibility towards the other in the advanced societies.

The immunity of the advanced societies depends on how developed

the resources of the developing societies and how minimal the gaps between the two cultures could be.

Online learning-Advanced LearningEnvironments2.wmv

Technology has a double and contradictory function; on the one hand, it functions as tool for development and

advancement; on the other hand, it could be tool for destruction .

Where are the limits?Where are the ethical judgments in the development and use

of technology?Does the human being bend the technology for the good of

humanity?Or does the human being lose the dimension of wisdom and

dimension of ethics at the era of technology?How can we manage the cultural shock that technology invites

into our lives in particular in a developing Moslem society?A milliard and quarter are already connected by a virtual world;

the rest are outside the net .The technological advancement does not necessarily reflect

ethical judgments. The economic hegemonies distract us from our real needs—the world's population with no bread and a

roof.We will always need the man/woman of ethics .