As far as we know, all cultures have rules about status and respect. These are rooted in our deep tacit assumptions about what actually merits status and deserves our respect. For example, the more authoritarian the culture, the greater the social distance between the upper and lower levels of status and, therefore, the more challenging it is for the ‘superior’ to be humble (‘being arrogant’ is the great hubris of the ‘superior’ folks) and to learn from others (these folks like to direct and advocate more than guide and inquire). For example, in our country today, one of our ‘high status’ presumptive presidential candidates continuously demonstrates an inability to ‘be humble’ (to not be ego-centric) and to be open to being influenced by others. This person is a product of our culture.
Consider, gentle reader, that our culture (the U.S. Culture) is individualistic, competitive, optimistic (mostly) and pragmatic (certainly). ‘We Believe’ that the basic unit of society is not communal (as in some other cultures) but is over-the-top individualistic – the individual’s rights must be protected at all costs (our adulteration of the second amendment to our Constitution supports this – no matter how many folks are murdered by firearms there continues to be over-whelming resistance to even tweaking the law in order to protect the collective – these are, at best, weak tweaks).
We are also entrepreneurial and hence we admire individual accomplishment – even when it comes to professional ‘team sports’ we tend to focus not on the team but on individual all-stars.
We thrive on competition – one winner, many losers – rather than high achievement (many successes, few failures). Optimism and pragmatism show up in the way we are oriented toward the short term (this short-term view also supports competition; high achievement is rooted in the long-term/view) and in our dislike of long-range planning. We love to roll things out and fix them as we go along (Microsoft is our poster-child for this). We believe we can fix anything – and, again, this supports short-range planning and thinking (think: Gulf War and its aftermath – which we are still dealing with decades later).
We are an impatient culture – and with the advent of the ‘Age of Technology’ our impatience has increased. As an unintended consequence, we are addicted to ‘speed’ and suffer from what Kundera calls: ‘Hurry Sickness.’ An unintended consequence is that ‘burnout’ has become the norm, not the exception (suicide rates among physicians continues to increase each year).
Most important of all, some say, is that we value task accomplishment over relationship-building (which, of course takes time, energy, effort and commitment). We are not aware of this bias – or perhaps we are aware of it and we just don’t care; we don’t want to be bothered by it for we are too busy to stop and consider it (stopping and reflecting upon it would take up more of our ‘valuable time’ and so this is certainly not an option for us busy-body folk).
Let’s see. What else?
Searcher-Seeker 
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