My Cultural Self-Identity: Typical American, Counter-Cultural Ambition

My Self-Identity: Typical American, Counter-Cultural Ambition


The first unexpected twist in my life of cross-cultural experiences was a moment when I found myself drinking chocolate milk with my little brother in a German bar, surrounded by American teenagers displaying obnoxious, drunken behavior we had never seen before. I was fifteen, my brother thirteen, and we were across the ocean for the first time on an orchestra tour surrounded by classic examples of “the rude American” stereotype. During that trip we stayed with host families and traveled with rich, spoiled, insensitive teenagers who were a world away from the small Mennonite town we were used to, a double culture shock. Germany in 1984 was a place were East/West conflict was intense and I soaked up the political ethos of visiting “The Wall” and trying to connect with the wide variety of classes and lifestyles of Germany we were experiencing, as well as the American soldiers we met in bars and on the street. Most of what that trip taught me was that I was passionately committed to not being a part of the “rude American” mindset when next I saw the world.
Unfortunately, when good fortune led me to the University of Waterloo in Canada for college in my seventeenth year, during the first week in the cafeteria line I actually slapped a boy for teasing me about what a typical “American” I was! (disclaimer: I can hardly believe that I really slapped him as he likes to claim today; I’m sure it was more of a gentle refute) The thing I wanted most was to be “Non-American,” and his stereotype accusation cut deep. Over time, as my Canadian friends got to know me, and we entered the college world of political discussion and debate, I became equally disgusted when I exhibited a leftist political view and was labeled an “Unusual American.” I found myself wanting people to believe that there were more compassionate, thoughtful, passionate activists in my home country than the world community realizes, and in being these things I was being “American”!
Through these early experiences, I have come to the conclusion that through my embracing of American counter-culture, I exhibit some of my strongest American cultural traits: nonconformity, individualism, assertiveness, rebelliousness, creative innovation, and adventure. My family culture encouraged the belief that each of us siblings were special, unique, and somehow above the everyday rules of normalcy. My Mennonite church culture taught me that my allegiance was not to things of this world, but to my God-driven individual conscience (bound together in community with likeminded individuals). Though family and church trained me carefully to speak out against dominant American culture, and follow different values, each of these sub-cultures can be considered firmly embedded in the larger American cultural landscape.
In my adult life, I traveled again to Germany and throughout Europe, and had the chance to live and work in Japan and Wales. As in all inter-cultural exchanges, I learned much about myself. The qualities that have helped me participate in meaningful cultural interactions are my warmth, strong intuition, and real affection toward people of all kinds. I am open-minded to diversity, justice oriented, and I understand the power of sharing food and meaningful labor, even without a common language. These traits have won me life-long friends across the world and have increased my flexibility and analytical ability.
I have also learned some things about myself that continue to keep me from effective cross-cultural exchange. To my embarrassment and regret, I have had no success whatsoever in learning another language. I believe that language does transform thoughts, and without comprehension of another culture’s language, I can only have a shadow of the thought process of that culture. I have a limited ability to see subtlety; I need to have things directly spelled out for me in most situations. Subtlety is essential for multi-cultural maturity. I am naturally argumentative and aggressive, qualities that have been encouraged by my cultural upbringing. This sort of thing really turns off most of the rest of the world. I can be dogmatic without a softening wisdom, and I need to learn and listen more before deciding on political positions.
In conclusion, though I have the ambition to be counter-cultural as an American, that ambition itself is a quality of the very Americanism I strive to overcome. I know I have much to learn in my quest to be a world citizen.