Growing up, whenever someone was “running amok”, it meant they were running around causing trouble and your mom was going to be pissed. However, in other cultures it has a very different, extreme meaning.

In Southeast Asia, Amok is an incredibly dangerous mental illness, defined as “an acute outburst of unrestrained violence, associated with homicidal attacks, preceded by a period of brooding and ending with exhaustion and amnesia” not only is this illness very dangerous, it’s very real. Primarily afflicting men and is thought to be triggered by stress and alcohol consumption.

The cultural differences of Amok are not completely unknown to Western culture however. In the 1960’s the hit television series Star Trek brought much of non-western culture into Western homes through the Vulcan character Spock. In the series, there is an episode titles “Amok Time”, which is an illness Spock suffers from as a result of alien biology. It makes him incredibly violent, unaware of his surroundings and prone to homicidal idealization. After his spell he has no idea of what happened and is physically exhausted.

While in reality, the illness of Amok is often cause by other mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, endogenous depression and epilepsy, the belief in Amok runs so deep in Southeast Asian culture, and is such an apparent problem, that police stations in Malaysia still carry the special two pronged staffs designed to pin someone suffering from Amok against the wall upon their capture.

After reading chapter 12, there was a certain section that caught my eye and maybe not neccisarliy for the best reasons. Culture Wars. The United States is always the first country I hear of when the term culture war is brought up, and I often notice that it is between the Evangelicals and “Liberals”.

Culture war tends to occur when two groups living in close proximity have very different values, for example pro-life versus anti-abortionists. This can lead to tensions and divisions in neighbourhoods and communities as cultures clash.

The reason I found this so interesting was because when I attended my other school, I watched a documentary for one of my Law classes called “Jesus Camp” (2006). The film follows three Evangelical Christian children through a summer camp run by Becky Fischer. Through the documentary there are multiple occasions when they refer to the ongoing conflict between the evangelicals and Americans who believe in a more secular society. The whole point of the camp is to teach the children how to be martyrs for their faith. At one point Fischer even yells out “this means war” repeatedly while the children speak in tongues and participate in a tribal like dance.

One particular subject I found particularly interesting during my reading was the section on Acculturation, specifically the pitfalls of acculturation. This is because I believe that people who are or aren’t acculturating  are treated differently depending on who they are. This Identity denial is a raging problem right now in society, typically directed towards non-white individuals who do not fit into the stereotype of what a person from that area looks or acts like. This rampant stereotyping often leads to different forms of discrimination such as systematic disenfranchisement, humiliation and unjust treatment – and that’s just to name a tiny few. This is even more apparent in cultures like the United States, where people from different cultures interact fairly regularly.

The example which I felt best illustrated this was the textbook’s piece on actress Mindy Kaling. I love Mindy, I think she is an amazing actress and author and all around fantastic in her field. But in my own white privilege bubble didn’t realize that she was asked different questions in her interviews.  There is also the study which proves that people will alter their presentation of their identity when being given identity-denying prompts.

Personally, I find this incredibly troubling. I love different cultures and try to embrace all of them the best I can. I acknowledge that not everyone I see on the street is going to match me perfectly and it is something I enjoy. I have such a hard time with the idea that people’s identities can be questioned or even denied because they do not fit the mould of what they should look like and sound like.

We all have that friend where you look across the room at each other in a meeting or in class and you both know exactly what the other person is thinking. Usually it’s get me out of here. But there are a lot of other ways people communicate as well, and it all revolves around context.

Context can exist in a variety of ways, and the way context is presented varies depending on which culture you find yourself in. For example, in Western society if you ask someone if you can sit next to them and they hesitate and very reluctantly go “I guess so” you would probably still sit next to them, as they said it was okay. However, in East Asian culture, if you were to have the same interaction with someone, you would be very unlikely to sit down. This is because Western culture is considered to be a low-context cultures, where what you say tends to be what you mean and no further interpretation is really needed. However, in countries like Japan, reading between the lines is a necessity, body language and nonverbal communication tend to be relied on much more than the actual words being spoken. These nonverbal cues are essential in all cultures, not just East Asian.

I always like to consider myself as being very self-aware. There a several aspects of who I am as a person that I am not necessarily a fan of, and other aspects I love about myself. For example, I am aware that I often will spread myself too thin helping other people and end up suffering myself, either academically, financially, emotionally, etc. I have a hard time saying no and this is something I am aware of and have to constantly check myself for. Other things, I don’t have a clue about until someone lets me know, because I’m not aware that I do it even though I should be – like how I obnoxiously interrupt people when I get excited in a conversation, because that is very annoying to other people.

Up until this class however, I was unaware that self-awareness was split into two components, subjective self-awareness and objective self-awareness. Subjective self-awareness occurs when we are very much focused on the outside world, this means we are not very aware of ourselves because our energy is focused outward (Heine, pg. 237). In contrast, objective self-awareness occurs when we are very aware of ourselves and how we may present to others and how they evaluate us (Heine, pg. 237). These go hand in hand with the different views of self. Independent being more subjective and interdependent being more objective. This is also influenced heavily by culture

A fantastic example of this is in the textbook, when students from America and students from Hong Kong were given to evaluations. On one evaluation they graded exceptionally well and on the other not as well. They were then asked to evaluate themselves. The American students graded themselves well regardless of the score they got back. Contrastingly, the students from Hong Kong scored themselves higher when they were evaluated higher by others (Heine, pg. 237-238). This is because Eastern cultures, specifically Asia, have more interdependent cultures and rely more on the perspectives and opinions of others to build up their self-awareness. It brought to my mind the amount of times my friends and I have walked out of exams feeling very good about how we did, only to get the grade back and see that was not the case.

One of the things that I notice about myself is how much I change my personality and how I carry myself depending on who I am around. When I am with my Canadian friends, I tend to be more reserved and quite, but my humour is a lot more dry and sharp. When I’m with my European friends, we often joke that my “Eurotrash” comes out. This means that I am usually a lot louder, more physically affectionate and I am much more liberal and there is usually food and wine involved. These two distinct cultures make up my sense of self, and where I am and who I’m with dictates which self I ma more comfortable presenting.

My maternal grandparents were first generation immigrants from Belgium and Holland, they moved to rural Ontario where they mainly farmed and opened a family restaurant. The culture my grandparents were raised in was very affectionate, open and family-oriented, much like many aspects of European culture today (especially in smaller towns and rural areas). They also came from very large families, so from a young age I learned the importance of being able to speak very loudly or even yell to be heard over the racket of a typical family gathering. I grew up exposed to alcohol in social settings, so when I turned nineteen, I didn’t feel the need to go off the deep end drinking because it wasn’t a milestone for me, alcohol had been in my life for years.

Contrastingly, my estranged father’s side of the family was several generations Canadian. They were far more reserved, the families were much smaller and alcohol very rarely had a positive element to it. Affection was reserved for special circumstances, such as “hello hugs” and “Goodbye hugs” and if anyone was yelling, someone was definitely in trouble. This made family gatherings incredibly stressful as a child because you weren’t entirely sure which cultural identity to take.

This is why I feel the different methods of cultural study are so important. Methods such as situation samplings I find crucial as I have experienced these in some form of way. Situation sampling is used by taking groups of people from different cultures and having them discuss specific parts of their day, then a group from each culture is brought in (in the textbook it is Americans and Japanese) and they are given these generated situations and asked how they would feel or react, this allows the researcher to compare and contrast the two to see where potential similarities and differences may be between cultures (Heine, 141-143). For example, when my parents’ divorced, the European side of my family was positively devastated, and became very supportive and involved to help my mother and our family. Meanwhile, my father’s side, which is very Canadian/North American, were very indifferent to the proceedings, as divorce is very common in Canadian culture.

Another term in the chapter which I found interesting which applied to my life was the term Unpacking, which is defined as, “identifying the underlying variables that give rise to the cultural difference” (Heine, 147). This means looking at moth my Canadian and European family and understanding what the difference is between the two which makes their cultures so different. Unpacking is a critical point in helping me better understand my own family.

The Canadian side of my family stayed in very urbanized areas, such as Vancouver, Toronto, etc. My paternal grandmother worked in munitions during WWII and was married three times. They were always on the move and everything was always newer, better, faster and sticking to the status quo. Not making noise.

The European side of my family came from heavily religious, farming backgrounds in Europe. Very little formal education and large families with far away neighbours. As a result, the family unit became the stronghold, with everyone helping out and working and contributing together. It wasn’t fast, new and easy and many times they had to roll with unexpected setbacks, which molded them into a far more relaxed and jovial group than my Canadian family. Living in Europe in WWII was also a huge factor for my family as the continent struggled to survive.