1) Define cultural desire and discuss your thoughts/feelings on whether cultural desire can be caught or taught. Why do you believe what you believe? Have you come to this belief through interpersonal or intrapersonal examples/observations? Be specific.
Cultural desire can be defined as the motivation of an individual to want to engage in the process of becoming culturally competent. It is not the motivation of an individual having to engage in the process of becoming culturally competent. In the context of cultural desire this motivation must be genuine as it is the very basic ability of an individual to read into their own inner experience and allow the quality of this inner experience to be apparent in the relationship. Culture desire is based on the constructs of caring and love, sacrifice, social justice, humility, compassion and sacred encounters.
The question of cultural desire lies in whether it can be caught or taught. In my own personal opinion I believe cultural desire can truly be ascertained by the catching. Theoretical understanding of any principal does not involve the experiences needed to fully own an idea, such as cultural desire. One can read as many books and analyze as many situations as the deem fit to say they have ownership over cultural desire, but they would not achieve the necessary level of motivation of an individual having to engage in the process of becoming culturally competent unless they have a life experience with the matter. One must have the need for others to be more culturally competent around themselves in some sort of event or situation that invokes the empathy necessary to have cultural desire.
This empathy needed is only attained through experience. No theoretical encounter can inspire the same level of passion and motivation than an event or situation which one has holstered ready for a similar one to arise with them on the other side of the ‘table.’ Now I would agree that the combination of being taught and being caught can effectively work together, but only in the sense that the individual has already experienced the necessary events or situations needed to spark the passion and motivation and has a need to be taught theoretical principals to further understand their ability to attain cultural desire. It is through intrapersonal and interpersonal events that such a principle as cultural desire can be understood.
In my position, specifically as a first generation Polish-American, there are distinctive experiences I have encountered that separate my ability to empathize with other cultures in America that deeply rooted citizens of this country could not possibly have the ability to relate to without moving outside of their own culture and experiencing the other side of the playground. For example, the experience of alienation and bigotry that runs in hand with being foreign, different, and culturally diverse can’t be experience by a domestic citizen that has been sheltered to culturally clashes. I have had to defend my self all my life against the stigmatism of being culturally impure to Americans, free floating in a sea of dynamic culture. Specifically, my inability throughout adolescents and young adulthood to convey cultural differences and defend against cultural assumptions has stigmatized me in countless situations as unintelligible and poorly delivering.
How can I explain issues that are so abstract to those without any experience in understanding my angle or point of view? I was too inexperienced in the philosophy of tolerance and explanation to feel anything but upset and self doubt. How can I explain to such a diverse population that I’m not just a Caucasian American citizen? I had so much trouble with this that it drove me mad and then after the storm I found had the motivation of an individual that wanted to engage in the process of becoming culturally competent. Not because I had to but because I wanted to so bad. I realized the flaws of those that tried to understand me and grew from those. It has lead me to so many fruitful culturally diverse relationship in my undergraduate and graduate years of education that I have attained a priceless gift, cultural desire. Though no one person can perfect this craft I had taken leaps forward to have a strong proficiency in cultural desire.
I can not imagine someone reading about this and truly being able to understand where I am coming from unless they have been in a position on the same plane. I don’t know if it is my explanation or the actual interpretation on the reader’s part but it exemplifies my point that cultural desire is attained through experience. You can read into examples, theories, books, or role-play all you want but you can’t gain the level of motivation necessary needed to become culturally competent unless you encounter a situation that strikes your heart and leaves you scarred. Scarred enough to learn about it later through being taught or scarred enough to be caught, either way this is how you reach cultural desire.
2) Review the building blocks of cultural desire (e.g., caring and love, sacrifice, social justice, humility, and compassion) and speak directly to your awareness of the type/quality/level of sacrifice and (cultural) humility you possess. What factors/attributes/experiences do you base your assessment on? In other words, when thinking about "how much" sacrifice and humility you possess in the direction of cultural desire, what makes you know what you know? Feel what you feel? Feedback from others? Your own awareness? Life circumstances? Comfort/discomfort? Use this question as an opportunity to do some self-appraisal of where you are on the topic at hand. Be honest, be critical.
Speaking directly to my awareness of the type/quality/level of sacrifice and cultural humility I possess there are factors/attributes/experiences I must base my assessment on. First let me start with sacrifice and its definition, which is one’s willingness to sacrifice prejudice and biases toward culturally different clients in order to develop cultural desire. It involves the ability to sacrifice our proprietary assumptions of our own rightness and our unreflective grip on our own certainty. This is a moral commitment to others regardless of their cultural values, beliefs or practices. This means that we must treat each person as a unique human being worthy and deserving of our love and care. With this idea of sacrifice in mind I must self assess and determine my type/quality/level of sacrifice by factors/attributes/experiences.
I have experience bigotry and cultural stigmatization through being white and culturally diverse. I had to work so hard on explain, understanding, and tolerating differences my entire life. Through the wounds that I been death and the nose I have stuck right up in the air at I have learned a great deal about myself and others of the same situation and the opposing. In this one life I have learned that there is no room for me to turn my head the other way when it comes to cultural desire. I have had to face it over and over again that it would be stupid for me to think that it will not reoccur in the future as it did in the past. My grip on cultural desire presently is derived from accepting who I am and tolerating ignorance. I am not better than any other human on this planet. We are on this planet with playing cards in hand and there is only this one game to play. How you play the cards is indicative of the path you take in life. There are no retires or shuffles made so what difference can I make on this planet understanding my fellow people. We all have flaws and strengths which make us alike broadly. I’m speaking of the connections that make us human and all one. There is no point in intolerance because it will be reciprocated. The change starts with our individual change not everyone else's.
Through tolerance I gain incite and through denial I waste time, precious life. My mind will not expand through stigmatizing, framing, and turning the other way. I will grow in my connection to the all the answers of the universe when I extend my mind’s hand to join another and accept them. I’m not preaching to become ‘Yes People’ but I am saying that to find the answer you are looking for you must connect. The connection must be with another and, most importantly, yourself. I could go on but it is because of feelings I have like these that I believe I have a strong level of sacrifice of high quality and of moral commitment. One can only ask for the reciprocation of this kind of sacrifice but one must first understand that this reciprocal sacrifice is pure subjective and self taught throughout the life time experience. You will only find what you seek and if you seek sacrifice and bring it to the table you will find it.
Moving on to the construct of humility, it can be defined as a quality of seeing the greatness in others and coming into the realization of the dignity and worth of others. It is not merely thinking less of yourself but the thinking of yourself less. The virtue of humility is in this sense serving your fellow man and has a paradoxical effect in the possession of humility for when we become aware of our humility and openly acknowledge it, we’ve lost it. Cultural humility is then defined as a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, re-addressing the power imbalance in the person-person relationship and developing mutually beneficial partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations. With this humility of sacrifice in mind I must self assess and determine my type/quality/level of sacrifice by factors/attributes/experiences.
The examples in my life that I can think of that relate to the construct of humility are from my interpersonal and intrapersonal development in my undergraduate years. I had the pleasure of rooming with two individuals from my high school who I was acquainted with but not super best friends as a middle school girl would say. One was a deeply rooted American citizen that was half Russian Jew and half Italian. The other roommate was “fresh off the boat” Korean and was still developing his English. I had a great amount of growing experiences with these individuals and the experiences shaped my perception of humility. Especially with my Korean roommate how we connected with the foreigner complex lead to both our developments in lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique.
It was in this Korean roommate’s death from suicide that I made the largest gains in cultural humility. It was my two weeks after my sophomore year in undergraduate and I had roomed with the same two roommates for the past two years. The Korean and other friends came to visit me that week in the summer to escape the tyrannical enforcements of home and free themselves back to the adult lives they perceived they had, we had. It was after the first night back I awoke to the death rattles of four of my close friend’s to find the fifth members three floors below struggling on the pavement. I came to harsh realization about many life matters and one of those included the cultural differences and concepts taught from the Korean to me. It was a point where time froze and there was life before the event and life after the event.
This traumatic experience led me down a path of such deep self reflection that I conceptualized an array of realizations of dignity and worth of others. I was forever changed and placed a worth on the human life for those outside the family nucleus and extended family. Every social interaction I have had with humility being at the heart of the interaction has built my ownership of cultural desire. My cultural competence magnified exponentially. I did not see race, ethnicity, and difference in others after that. Life is to precious to frame and discriminate after that. It is the individual that I knew I had to focus on and not the externalities associated with the physical manifestation of genetics, culture, and personality. I invoked my own salvation through a lifelong commitment of self-evaluation and self-critique because I do not and will never understand why he left life the way he did. This habitual behavior is not simply expressed with his and my relationship but with all my relationships currently and in the future. It is for this reason I believe I have a moderate to high level of humility of high quality.
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