“the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the earth”

While working outside of the United States I was having dinner one evening with colleagues and, through a fault completely of my own, I became engaged in a conversation about “values”. I considered myself an experienced traveller at the time and always tried to avoid conversations that might in any way compare the goodness and badness of the way people from different cultures lived. Not only did I find such conversations condescending I also found they invited disagreement, something that usually doesn’t go well with an evening meal.

Regardless of my defenses against value-laden conversations with people from different cultures I found my self, stupidly, offering my opinion on what I thought was a society or culture which had what I considered “good values”. Without enough hesitation or at least enough thought I impetuously said, I found societies that valued “the dignity of an individual human being” to be in the best interest of all.

I thought I was expressing a universally held value and wasn’t really expecting any objection but it took only seconds for one of my colleagues to say something to the affect,

“you westerners! you’re all so selfish, thinking only of yourselves. Individuals are of no importance compared to the importance of the group!”

which in the case of the colleague who was speaking meant the “tribe”. He was from an African country and the more I worked in Africa the more I learned of the importance of “the tribe”. Without it…