Assuming We Set the Norm? Partnering with People from the WEIRD World
Assuming We Set the Norm? Partnering with People from the WEIRD World
I still remember a sleepover with a friend’s family when I was a child. The mother of that family didn’t know how strange it was to put cheese in the scrambled eggs. Yuck! My mother would never do that. I just assumed that my family was normal, and any family that did things differently from us was odd. I was horrified and felt pity for my friend who lived in such a weird family. This perspective can be somewhat cute when it comes from a child. But, when adults think like this, it can be a huge problem.
One of the rarely understood or examined assumptions that American Christians make is that we are normal and anyone unlike us is somehow odd. This is a normal phenomenon found in most cultures, especially among children or those who have never experienced another culture. But, because of America’s vast geographical size, distance from international neighbors, mostly monolingual population, and global cultural media dominance, Americans are more prone to maintain this childlike assumption of our own normality more than people in most culture. We know other cultures are different, but because we have not experienced them closely enough to see their strengths, we may just assume they are strange and likely inferior. This is a childish assumption that leads to childish attitudes and behavior.
As a result, we assume that how we think, what we value, how we operate, etc. sets the standard for what other countries and cultures should want to be. We talk about “developed,” “developing,” and “undeveloped” countries, as if there is a single continuum, with the USA at the highest point. Therefore, we easily assume that any culture that is less “developed” must aspire or should aspire to be like the best version of us. Americans often assume that our nation is both the goal and the standard (or norm).
In reality, the majority culture in America is WEIRD. I mean that in two senses. First, in the most natural meaning of that word, we are unusual. Americans only make up about 4-5% of humans on the planet which makes us a tiny minority of the world. We are also a very young nation. Other cultures predate us by thousands of years. However, our culture is on display all over the world, which gives us the illusion that it is normal. However, our culture is vastly different from the overwhelming percentage of the rest of humanity. While people in most cultures may envy our resources and opportunities, they don’t necessarily aspire to be like us. For example, they don’t want to be as busy, distracted, disconnected, and driven as we are. They see the toll our culture takes on us and feel sorry for us much of the time. If we childishly assume all people groups want to be like us, because we assume we are the norm, we misread how we are seen by others.
I also mean we are WEIRD, as in the acronym, coined by a behavioral scientist in 2010. WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. [i] I wish they had made the I stand for Individualistic. That would have captured our culture better, in my mind. Regardless, this moniker of WEIRD was coined to critique research bias in academia. Most of the research and writing in the behavioral sciences is done with and for people in the western world with atypical cultures from a global standpoint, which results in biased results. But these biased results are often presented as if they give us universally applicable data—as if all cultures are like WEIRD cultures. This acronym is controversial and subject to much criticism in the social sciences, but it is helpful for my purposes.
While I do have a BS degree in behavioral science, this is not my primary field or the focus in this blog or my larger work. I’m not trying to be judgmental toward American culture, as if it is uniquely flawed. It isn’t. Our culture has is like all others: we have some weaknesses to overcome and some wonderful strengths to appreciate. For example, we are unusually generous and eager to help others. But we can also be unusually un-self-aware. Because of our resources and the outsized impact of our culture, we are protected from knowing how odd we appear to others and often show up without sufficient curiosity and humility. We mean well in our efforts to help, but we easily overstep as we engage in cross-cultural relationships and rarely feel the toes of our global partners beneath our feet. Too often our global parters feel an obligation to act like us to maintain our partnership, even when doing so will often make them less relevant and effective where they are.
While WEIRD Americans often make child-like assumptions that we are the norm or set the standard for all people, it is important to recognize that this can become childish, dangerous, and destructive if left unchecked. What we need is a mature appreciation for the diverse cultures of the world and how we all have gifts to bring and parts to play in God’s kingdom. I ask our global family to lean into opportunities to help us grow into an adult-sized perspective. And I pray that my American church family would receive the gifts that come from being in a posture of listening and learning and seeing how we can live and love more effectively.
[i] For more about the WEIRD acronym, just Google it and you’ll find more information than you ever want to know. You might want to check out the 2020 book, The WEIRDest people in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joseph Henrich.