Persuasion – Page 8 – understand-culture

Richard P. Feynman

Richard Feynman was an American physicist who is best known for his work on QED (quantum electrodynamics, and a pun on the Latin phrase ‘quod erat demonstrandum’). He also developed the now-standard Feynman diagrams and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Feynman was a strong advocate for simplicity and explaining things so that the average person could understand them. He believed that anyone who understood something should be able to explain it to a layperson.

In fact, he believed this so vehemently that once, when he was asked to explain why spin one-half particles obey Fermi Dirac statistics, Feynman initially said that he would prepare a freshman lecture on the subject.

Later he admitted “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” It’s also believed that Feynman said “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t really understand it.”

Native American Oral Tradition

When European explorers and settlers first arrived in America, there were hundreds of different American Indian nations. Although these tribes had different languages and cultures they shared a rich oral tradition.

The stories that these nations passed down recorded everything from history to cultural beliefs and even to science and technology. Studies by anthropologists David Pendergast and Clement Meighan have shown clear evidence that Native American oral traditions contain real history, and Stephen J. Augustine, the Hereditary Chief and Keptin of the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, has said about the oral tradition that

“(The Elders) did joke with each other and they told stories, some true and some a bit exaggerated, but in the end the result was a collective memory. This is the part which is exciting because when each Elder arrived they brought with them a piece of the knowledge puzzle.

They had to reach back to the teachings of their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. These teachings were shared in the circle and these constituted a reconnaissance of collective memory and knowledge. In the end the Elders left with a knowledge that was built by the collectivity.”

Many of the newcomers to America came from cultures that preferred written factual documents over spoken storytelling, and contact with the natives soon blended the two traditions. Now most education and oration in the US contains both forms of information: anecdotal and factual.

Eyewitness News

The first eyewitness news program began at KYW-TV in Cleveland, Ohio in 1959. Although this program was called Eyewitness News, it still followed the traditional news format (a news anchor reading the news while looking into a studio camera), until Al Primo became the news director in the early 1960s. Primo, a former anchorman, decided that instead of the typical news format, his news station would rely primarily on visuals, especially film and videotape.

Soon, the new format had spread to more than 200 local television stations across the country, and in 1965 KYW moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia, where Primo formed the first on-camera reporting team. Now, in addition to news anchors, reporters could be seen onscreen.

As the eyewitness format grew in popularity, more developments occurred all over the US. WLS in Chicago began using co-anchors who would chat on air about the news stories, a new style which was known as “happy talk.” At WABC in New York, field reporters appeared on-camera to discuss the stories about which they were reporting.

Eventually eyewitness news became so standard and so popular with the masses that now it is often referred to as “people’s news.” These days, virtually all local television and network stations in the U.S. use some form of eyewitness news, and many countries in Europe and Latin America also use similar news reporting styles.

American Teaching

Perhaps because of the high cost of tuition at American universities, Americans typically view students as customers and schools as businesses. As such, teachers will attempt to cater to the needs of their students – if a certain process doesn’t interest the customers (students), the teacher will change it in order to keep the customers attentive.

During their classes, if American teachers notice that students aren’t paying attention, they will often include several amusing anecdotes that they tell throughout the class to keep their students’ focus.

For example, during a physics class, it would not be uncommon for an American professor to stop the lecture to talk to students about how Herman Weyl (one of the early proponents of group theory) had an affair with Erwin Schrodinger’s (the physicist who’s best known not only for his quantum mechanics equation but also for his potentially dead cat) wife, or how Murray Gell-Mann (who won the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics) was so narcissistic that he once warned his cab driver not to cash his check, because he believed that his signature was worth more than his cab fare had been.

American teachers will also include anecdotal stories from their own lives if these stories have any relevance to the subject matter. For example, if the teacher is describing a discovery made at CERN, he/she might talk about a colleague who worked there.

Future

When the search term future is keyed in on Amazon.com, 134,329 search results are generated. Some titles found from the search include the following: Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz, and The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau.

Turnkey systems

A turnkey solution is a total solution which allows the user to “turn a key and the system is ready to go”. Originating in the IT sector, turnkey systems include all necessary hardware and software. They are typically developed by original equipment manufacturers (OEM).

Germans prefer turnkey systems, as the receiver of the system, whether they are in the buiness-to-consumer or business-to-business context. Conversely, Germans prefer to develop and market turnkey systems. In fact, many German manufacturers will go as far as to make their own tools and machines, in order to make the products they then sell.

Holistic

Especially important to Germans is explaining connections, relationships and interdependencies. This signals that the presenter has understood the subject matter in its entirety. A holistic understanding, in turn, is based on a clear, methodical, systematic approach.

In contrast, a particularistic approach – breaking down complexity into its component parts and focusing on the most important – gives the Germans the impression that the whole has not been sufficiently understood.

Germans are taught at a young age to look for connections, relationships and interdependencies. Teaching methods and materials in primary schools stress analysis and discussion of the bigger picture. An approach based on particulars and examples is used with only younger pupils.

The focus on the system – on relationships and interdependencies – is further developed at the university level. Both at the beginning and the end of any presentation, whether written or oral, the subject and the analysis results are placed in their overall context, including analysis from related fields of study.

Analysis

A separation of a whole into its component parts; the identification or separation of ingredients of a substance; a statement of the constituents of a mixture; proof of a mathematical proposition by assuming the result and deducing a valid statement by a series of reversible steps; an examination of a complex, its elements, and their relations; a method in philosophy of resolving complex expressions into simpler or more basic ones.

In their curriculum vitae (resumé) German job applicants highlight their analytical abilities, knowing well that German employers value those skills especially.

Theory

The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another; abstract thought; the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art; a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action; an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances; a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena; a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation.

Germans feel very comfortable using theory to explain the relationships and interdependencies of particulars. Theory allows for understanding the “big picture.“

Bismarck’s Treaty System

Otto von Bismarck was Chancellor of the German Reich from 1871 until 1890. He is best known for a complex web of treaties with the other European powers – France, Great Britain, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tsarist Russia. These treaties allowed Germany to grow industrially and militarily without provoking attack by any combination of those rival powers.

Bismarck’s diplomacy ending the Balkan Crisis of 1879 increased Imperial Germany’s international prestige, at the same time limiting Czarist Russia‘s influence in that region. Anticipating a frustrated Moscow, Bismarck wisely sought protection from Austro-Hungary via a mutual defense treaty signed in 1879, a treaty relationship which would hold until the end of the First World War.

In 1881 Bismarck pulled off another diplomatic coup by reducing tensions with Tsarist Russia and signing a treaty of mutual defense with Moscow, thereby preventing a possible anti-German coalition between Russia and France. Bismarck extended this system of alliances in 1882 by crafting a treaty involving the German Reich, Austro-Hungary and Italy, adding Rumania in 1883, defending against a possible French-British alliance against Germany.

Unfortunately, this complex, brilliantly devised system of treaties would fall apart not long after the young and impulsive Kaiser, Wilhelm II., took power and decided that Bismarck‘s time had come to an end. Wilhelm II. went on to antagonize and provoke Europe‘s powers in all the ways in which Bismarck had worked so hard to avoid. In August 1914 the Great War began.

Warning: It’s complicated.