Culture

• Ref: “Strategic Learning” by William G. Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management

Culture is probably the most misunderstood and mismanaged part of the business system—and arguably the most important success factor of all.

Culture expresses itself through specific values and observable behaviors.

In a particular society, culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors that persist over time because they help that society solve its problems. (whether social, economic, or political). Every society has an elaborate system of rewards and penalties designed to ensure that supportive behaviors continue and that that destructive behaviors are extinguished.

• "Cultures and Organizations--Software of the Mind" by Geert Hofstede ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

This word (Culture) has several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tilling of the the soil.
"Culture (One)": In most Western languages "culture" commonly means "cilivlization" or "refinement of the mind" and in particular the results of such refinement, like education, art, and literature. This is "culture in the narrow sense".
"Culture (Two)": Culture as mental software, however, corresonds to a much broader use of the word which is common among social anthropologists.
Social (or cultural) anthropology is the science of human societies, in particular (although not only) traditional or "primitive" ones. In social anthropology, "culture" is a catchword for all those patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting ... Not only those activities supposed to refine the mind, but also the ordinary and menial things in life: greeting, eating, showing or not showing feelings, keeping a certain physical distance from others, making love, or maintaining body hygiene.
"Culture (Two)" is always a collevtive phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment. It is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or categrory of people from another.

• Claude Levi-Strausse, the grand old man of French anthropology:

Cultural relativism affirms that one culture has no absolute criteria for judging the activities of another cultrure as "low" or "noble". However, every culture can and shouold apply such judgment to its own activities, because its members are actors as well as observers.

US Jury System

The History and Future of the Jury System in America

By Timothy Sexton, published Jan 08, 2007

Terminology

• voir dire (IPA /vwɑr dir/) is a phrase in law which derives from Middle French. In origin it refers to an oath to tell the truth (Latin verum dicĕre), in other words to give a true verdict. The word voir (or voire), in this context, is an old French word meaning "truth". It is unconnected with the modern French word voir, which derives from Latin vidēre ("to see"), though the expression is now often interpreted by false etymology to mean "to see [them] say".
  

o In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and sometimes in the US it refers to a "trial within a trial". A hearing to determine the admissibility of evidence, or the competency of a witness or juror.
o In the United States, it now generally refers to the process by which prospective jurors are questioned about their backgrounds and potential biases before being chosen to sit on a jury. As Gordon P. Cleary defined voir dire in his book Trial Evidence Foundations (James Publishing, 2007 at section 201), "Voir Dire is the process by which attorneys select, or perhaps more appropriately reject, certain jurors to hear a case." For more detail, see Jury selection.

• Magna Carta (Latin for "Great Charter", literally "Great Paper"), also called Magna Carta Liberatum ("Great Charter of Freedoms"), is an English charter originally issued in 1215. Magna Carta was the most significant early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today. Magna Carta influenced the development of the common law and many constitutional documents, such as the United States Constitution. It required the King to renounce certain rights, respect certain legal procedures and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects, whether free or fettered — most notably the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment. Many clauses were renewed throughout the Middle Ages, and continued to be renewed as late as the 18th century. By the second half of the 19th century however, most clauses in their original form had been repealed from English law.

The Magna Carta was the first document that was forced onto an English King by his subjects in an attempt to limit his powers by law. (It was preceded by the 1100 Charter of Liberties in which King Henry I voluntarily stated what his own powers were under the law).
In practice Magna Carta mostly did not limit the power of the King in the Middle Ages; by the time of the English Civil War however it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the King was bound by the law.
Magna Carta is normally understood to refer to a single document, that of 1215. Various amended versions of the Magna Carta appeared in subsequent years however, and it is in fact the 1297 version which remains on the statute books of England and Wales.

History

• The concept of twelve strangers deciding the fate of another stranger dates back to a document formed at the height of the power of British monarchy. On June 15, 1215 rebellious barons forced King John of England to affix his seal to a list of freedoms and liberties. However, these rights were never intended to be enjoyed by the masses as some sort of democratic ideal. Despite this limited targeting of rights, it is the Magna Carta from which the term "a jury of one's peers" springs and not the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In practice, however, this was done to reduce the powers of the king to restrict him from creating laws at his whim. In addition, in local cases where laws were broken the result typically tended to be violent resolutions and the clauses in the Magna Carta were designed to bring a means whereby disputes could be solved equitably.
  

• The right to a trial by jury is one of the Constitutional foundations of American law. So important was the concept of trial overseen by a jury of one's peers that it was included among the Bill of Rights. The Sixth Amendment is a codification of the rights to be granted to individuals in case of criminal prosecutions in federal courts. With the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, these rights were made applicable at the state level. The trial by jury is a bedrock foundation for jurisprudence in the US. The founding fathers were heavily influence by the Magna Carta in the development of the constitutional law of the land and viewed their own revolutionary break with King George III as analogous in some ways to the revolutionary spirit that inspired the Magna Carta in the first place. It is incredibly difficult to imagine the American legal system operating under any other method.
• The jury system has undergone various transformations over the century.
  

Composition of a Jury

• (1968) Jury Selection and Service Act mandated that the pool of jury names be selected from registered voters and that names be randomly selected.

• American citizens can only serve on juries in those states in which they are official residents.

• Exemptions include not being a US citizen and not being able to understand the English language, as well as certain physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness, physical infirmities and age. Obviously, those under the age of eighteen are not allowed to serve on a jury, but elderly people are also typically allowed to be exempt. Those with pressing occupational excuses typically tend to receive exemptions as well. For instance, doctors and nurses rarely serve on juries lasting more than a day. Clergymen also usually receive exemptions.

Function of Jury

• The function of the jury in the American judicial system is to attend the trial and deliberate on the evidence in order to provide a unanimous verdict. The point of a jury system is that it is supposed to provide a fair and unbiased examination of the evidence; taking away the power of the judge who may be prejudicial in his decision.

• In addition, many view the use of jury as an important defense against unchecked power in the hands of the state. When the state controls the delivery and judgment of evidence the possibility for abuse increase exponentially.

• A US jury verdict must be unanimous, regardless of what the verdict is. Should a unanimous decision not be made, the term used to describe that circumstance is a hung jury. A hung jury does not mean that the defendant is either guilty or innocent; the decision on whether to try the person again or not falls into the hands of the district attorney.

In Other Countries

• The English jury is also 12-person system, but allows for the possibility of a non-unanimous verdict. At the discretion of the judge, if deliberations go past a certain point he can instruct the jury that a verdict can be brought based on a 10-2 vote.

• In other countries there are stipulations as to which kinds of crimes are tried by jury.

• People of some other nations actually frown upon putting their fate into the hands of their peers. The very idea of letting an uneducated person control their destiny is absolute anathema.

Misc

• Although the US court system has a vicious history of jury nullification in which all-white juries convicted blacks of crimes they not only were innocent of committing, but which the jury members knew they were innocent of committing, it several infamous cases during the 1990s that led to scrutiny about the very fairness of the jury system in America today.

• Many high-profile trials that ended in hung juries were discovered to have been nearly unanimous with only one or two holdouts. Subsequently there have been some efforts made to follow England's move toward allowing non-unanimous verdicts.

Culture Codes

The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille; Broadway Books; ISBN: 978-0-7679-2057-5

1 Introduction
1.1 The Author
Clotaire Rapaille is a cultureal anthropologist and marketing expert. He is the chairman of Archetype Discoveries Worldwide. He is a personale advisor to 10 high-ranking CEO’s. He is kept on retainer by 50 Fortune 100 companies.
1.2 Background
1.2.1 Henry Laborit: learning and emotion are tied together.
1.2.2 Konrad Lorenz: Imprint; p.6
1.2.3 What does the author mean by Code and Discovery
“Discovery” process. Example: Nestle wanted to market coffee in Japan. The author's process of finding out:

1. 1st hour: I took the persona of a visitor from another planet, someone who had never seen coffee before and had no idea how one “used” it. I asked for help understanding the product, believing their description would give me insight into what they though of it.
   
2. 2nd hour: I had them sit on the floor like elementary school children and use scissors and a pile of magazines to make a collage of words about coffee. The goal here was to get them to tell me stories with these words that would offer me further clues.
3. 3rd hour: I had them lie on the floor with pillows. I put on soothing music and asked them to relax. What I was doing was calming their active brainwaves, getting them to that tranquil point just before sleep. When they reached this state, I took them on a journey back from their adulthood, past their teenage years, to a time when they were very young. Once there, I asked them to think again about coffee and to recall their earliest memory of it, the first time they consciously experienced it, and their most significant memory of ti. I designed this process to bring participants back to their first imprint of coffee and the emotion attached to it.
   

1.2.4 Human Brains; p.81
Human brain is divided into 3 parts:

• The cortex (the cerebral hemispheres), handles learning, abstract thought, and imagination. The cortex comes into practical use in most children after they are 7 years old.
• The limbic system (the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus), deals with emotions. The limbic brain is structured between birth and age five, largely through a child’s relationship with his mother. Because of this relationship with the mother, the limbic has a strong feminine side—when we say a man is “getting in touch with his feminine side—what we’re really saying is that he is not afraid to access his limbic brain.
• The reptilian brain (the brain stem and the cerebellum). The name comes from this region’s similarity to the brains of reptiles, which are believe to be relatively unchanged from the brains their predecessors had 200 million years ago. Our reptilian brains program us for 2 major things: survival and reproduction. These are our most fundamental instincts. The reptilian brain is therefore more influential than our other two brains.
  

1.2.5 Notion
Principle 1: You can’t believe what people say
Principle 2: Emotion is the energy required to learn anything
Principle 3: The structure, not the content, is the message
Principle 4: There is a window in time for imprinting, and the meaning of the imprint varies from one culture to another
Principle 5: To access the meaning of an imprint within a particular culture, you must learn the code for that imprint

2 Adolescent Culture
p.33; The American culture exhibits many of the traits consistent with adolescence: intense focus on the “now”, dramatic mood swings, a constant need for exploration and challenge to authority, a fascination with extremes, openness to change and reinvention, and a strong belief that mistakes warrant second chances.

3 Beauty and Fat
...
4 Health and Youth
...
4.1 Health
4.1.1 American
The code for health and wellness in America is MOVEMENT. Americans need to fill up their free time. Americans retirees begin second careers. They are devastated when, as they become elderly, they lose their driver’s licenses or find themselves relegated to wheelchairs. They feel lost when they give up their jobs. It is a very reptilian response. They suddenly find themselves with mush less to do—with must less movement in their lives—and the prospect is frightening. Many seek comfort and health affirming movement in hobbies or organizations.
4.1.2 Chinese; p. 81
Health means being in harmony with nature.
Chinese medicine has always taken into consideration the human being’s place in the natural world—curing illness using plants and herbs, astrology, and even the phases of the moon. The Chinese believe that they live in permanent connection with the natural elements and that good health is related to being at peace with nature.
4.1.3 Japanese; p.81
The Japanese see good health as an obligation. It you are healthy, you are committed to contributing to your culture, your community, and your family. They feel a powerful sense of guilt if they fall ill. Japanese children will apologize to their parents for getting sick, for they know illness may cause them to fall behind in school. In this culture, you don’t just wash your hands to stay clean, but also out of a sense of duty to yourself as a servant of the culture and to prevent someone else from getting sick because of you.
4.2 Youth
4.2.1 P.85 Immigrants keep America forever young
In many ways America is one of the oldest of the world’s nations: French Revolution began in 1789; the modern Italian became a nation-state in 1861, the German empire was founded in 1871. America has existed in the present form longer than France, Italy, and Germany. So why are American so fascinated with youth?
American culture is a culture filled with immigrants. Immigrants come here and leave the past behind. They start over in American. They are re-born here, often with new careers and new (American) dreams. Since we continue to receive immigrants in large numbers, this sense of renewal and reinvention is a living thing in our culture. In itself, this keeps us young.
4.2.2 The American code for youth is mask

5 Home and Dinner
5.1 Home
America was founded by a group of people who came here to create a new home. When they arrived, there were no houses, not roads, none of the trappings of home. For many of them, there was also no turning back. We see home not only as the house we grew up in or the one where we live with out families, but as out entire country. No invading force has ever occupied our country. Never in our history have we lost our home.
Thanksgiving is about coming home for dinner.
War is not won until “we bring ours boys home.”
The home plate in baseball.
American Code: “RE-“ return, reunite, reconfirm, renew. Home is a place where you can do things repeatedly and have a good sense of the outcome—unlike the outside world, where everything can be so unpredictable.
In the American house, the kitchen is the central room where the family gathers. The kitchen is the heart of the Americxan home because an essential ritual takes place there: the preparation of the evening meal. This is a ritual filled with repetition and reconnection that leads to replenishment.
On code: crowding around grandma’s dinner table for big family events.
Off code: go to a restaurant with spacious table.

6 Work and Money
6.1 Work
“What do you do?” => “What job do you do?” It’s another way of asking “What is your purpose?” as though one were looking at an unfamiliar machine and asking “What is it for?” The answers enable us to size someone up, as well as providing an evening’s worth of small talk. Many other cultures cannot fathom why one would continue to work hard long after someone has made enough money to keepa comfortable living. When our forefathers came to America and discovered a huge underdeloped land, their first though wasn’t “Let’s have some tea.” It was “Let’s get to work.” There was a New world to create, and it wasn’t going to create itself. Towns needed building. The West needed opening. The rudiments of a bold political experiment needed to be put in place. There wasn’t time for leisure then, and in a very real way, we still believe there isn’t time for it now.
The report, issued by the International Labor Organization, found that Americans work 137 hours, or about three and one-half weeks, more a year than Japanese workers, 260 hours (about six and one-half weeks) more a year than British workers and 499 hours (about 12 1/2 weeks) more a year than German workers, the report said. The Japanese had long been at the top for the number of hours worked, but in the mid-1990's the United States surpassed Japan, and since then it has pulled farther ahead.
American Code for Work: WHO YOU ARE.
Americans believe that they are what they do in their jobs. WE celebrate hugely successful businesspeople. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Lee Iacocca, Andy Grove, Donny Deutch show. Tom Clancy. Deep down we believe that you never have to be stuck in what you do. Entrepreneurs are inspirational to us because they set their own course of identity evolution.

6.2 Money
American Code for Money: Show Me the Proof
There is very little “old money” in America. The overwhelming preponderance of the wealth in this country belongs to the person who originally earned it. Our culture is filled with “self-made” people, and in some very real way, we all have the same starting point with regard to wealth—we all began poor. We came here with no money and established the goal of making life better for our children. The notion that we “come from nothing” pervades America. IN a sense, we have the poorest rich people in the world, because even those who accumulate huge sums of money think like poor people.
It isn’t a goal in and of itself for most Americans. We rely on it to show us that we are good, that we have true value in the world. An American can’t be knighted for his deeds or become a baroness or baron. American accolades are relative and ephemeral. We can prove what we’ve accomplished only by making as much money as possible. Money is our barometer of success.

7 Quality and Perfection
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was an economic slump in the US, while the Japanese economy was growing robustly; many American companies questioned why the Japanese were succeeding while they floundered. Many believed the answer was quality. Many U.S. companies concluded that if they were to compete, they must adopt the Japanese approach to quality.
This foray failed. Our quality standards are not appreciably better today than they were in the 1980s, though corporations spend billions of dollars trying to change this. Why? The answer lies in the Codes.
American Code for quality: It Works
American Code for perfection: Death
Americans understand the concept of “getting it right the first time” at the cortex level, but deeper down they don’t want to do it, might even fear doing it. We are an adolescent culture with an adolescent attitude. We don’t want people telling us what to do and holding us to their standards. We want to discover things and lean how to do things our own way. When we arrived in the New World, there was no instruction manual teaching us how to deal with the conditions. We had to learn everything ourselves, and we did it the only way we could—through trial and error. Learning from our mistakes not only allowed us to survive, but also helped us to grow into a powerful and hugely successful country. We were rewarded for our ability to pick ourselves up off the ground and do things better the second and third times. Trying, failing, learning from our mistakes, and coming back stronger than ever is an essential part of the American archetype.
Japan has half of our population crammed into an area the size of Cal. State. There was never a vast frontier to explore. The Japanese couldn’t “dispose” of their houses or their property if they get disenchanted; they needed to make the most of their land and to keep it as productive as possible. Efficiency is critical. There’s no room for wasted products or wasted process. Mistakes are costlier. Quality is a necessity. Perfection is premium.
Americans find perfection boring. If something is perfect, you’re stuck with it for life. We want a new house, a new car, etc. We want things to become obsolete, because when they do we have the excuse we need to buy something new.

8 Food and Alcohol
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9 Shopping and Luxury
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10 The Code for the American in Other Cultures
What other cultures think of America?
10.1 France
A 40-year-old French man: “I keep thinking that Americans are going to fail terrible sometime soon. How can you succeed when you know so little about how the world works? Somehow, though, they tend to wind up on top. It’s a complete mystery to me.”
The Code for American in France is Space Travelers.
The French Code for France is Idea. Raised on stories of great French philosophers and thinkers French children imprint the value of ideas as paramount and refinement of the mind as the highest goal.

10.2 Germany
A 50-year old German: “Americans are cowboys. All of them are cowboys. They might wear business suits, but they still act like cowboys. They aren’t as smart or disciplined as we are, but they have an impressive ability to do what they set out to do.”

The Code for American in Germany is John Wayne
The image of John Wayne is of the strong, friendly stranger who helps save a town from trouble and then moves on with no expectation of thanks or remuneration. He is a tough guy. He’s “the law”. He never, however, shoots first. In this context, our actions in Iraq are off Code to Germans because they believe that we “shot first” there, embarking on a military response before exhausting all diplomatic solution.
German code for Germany is Order. As illustrated by the Lego toy.
Over many generations, Germans perfected bureaucracy in an effort to stave off the chaos that came to them in wave after wave, and Germans are imprinted early on with this most powerful of codes. That imprint makes children reach dutifully for the (Lego) instructions, and that Code prevents them from immediately destroying their neat construction in order to build it anew.

Lego, the Danish toy company, found instant success with their interlocking blocks in the German market, while sales foundered in the USA.
German kids read the instructions carefully and build what should be build. The results are exactly as what they should be. The mothers praise them and proudly put the result on display. It’s now time to buy another set.
American kids don’t read instructions. They build whatever strikes their fancy. Then they tear it apart and build something else that they want. They never need to buy a new set.

10.3 England
The English Code for America is Unashamedly Abundant.
An 18-year-old English woman: “Everything about American is big. The country is big, the people are big, their ambitions are very big, and their appetite for everything is big. I’ve never been there, but I imagine everyone living in a huge house and driving gigantic cars.”
A 55-year-lod English man: “It’s easy to think of Americans as somewhat beneath us. Their accents are ridiculous (and they insist on using their voices at such high volume), they all seem liked a bunch of bounding children, they consider “history” to be anything that took place in the past decade, and they all weigh too much. If they are beneath us, though, why have they accomplished so much? They seem to understand something we fail to understand.”
The English Code for England is Class. There is a strong sense among the English that they are of a higher social stratum than other people. This arises from England’s long history of world leadersip (“the sun never sets on the British Empire”) and from the messages passes down from generation to generation that being English is a special privilege that one receives at birth.

11 The Code for the American Presidency
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12 The Code for America
What Americans think of America?
WE see ourselves as “new”. We are always building and renewing, preferring to tear things down rather than preserve.
We see ourselves as occupants of vast amounts of space. You can drive from Seattle to Miami, stay in Holiday Inn every night, shop at Sears, eat lunch at McDonald everyday, and have a cup of Starbucks every morning. The sense of newness, size, diversity, and the unity forms a very strong imprint on Americans. Our symbols are eagles gliding in midair, a huge statue of a woman welcoming visitors to our shoures, a flag being raised on top of the ruins of a devastated building. These symbols form for us a very strong image of who we are meant to be.
The American Culture Code for America is Dream.
Dreams have driven this culture from its earliest days. The dream of explorers discovering the New World. The dream of pioneers opening the West. The dream of the Founding Fathers imaging a new form of union. The dream of entrepreneurs forging the Industrial Revolution. The dream of immigrants coming to a land of hope. The dream of a new group of explorers landing safely on the moon. Our Constitution is the expression of a dream for a better society. We created Hollywood and Disneyland and the Internet to project our dreams out into the world. We are the product of dreams and we are the makers of dreams.
Our notion of abundance is a dream: it is the dream of limitless opportunity that we believe is synonymous with being American.
p. 163; A French expression: “What is useless is what I cannot live without.”

“Angels & Demons”

by Dan Brown; ISBN 0-671-02736-0

p. 21 In CERN at Geneva, Switzerland, there is an engraved bronze:

For Cultural Innovation in the Digital Age
Awarded to Tim Berners Lee and CERN
For the invention of the
WORLDWIDE WEB

*The web began at CERN as a network of in-house computer sites.
* CERN: Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire

p. 78 Portuguese man-of-wars trap fish between their tentacles using nematocystic charges.

p.111 U.S. one-dollar bill. In the back, the Great Seal on the left. There’s an eye inside a triangle, which is above a pyramid. The writing under the pyramid says “Novus Ordo Seclrum”, which means New Secular Order.

p.108
(Vittoria asked) “Do you believe in God, Mr. Langdon?”

“Do I believe in God?”

A spiritual conundrum, Langdon thought. … Although he studied religion for years, Langdon was not a religious man. He respected the power of faith, the benevolence of churches, the strength religion gave so many people … and yet, for him, the intellectual suspension of disbelief that was imperative if one were truly going to “believe” had always proved too big an obstacle for his academic mind.

“I wanted to believe,” he heard himself say.

Vittoria’s reply carried no judgment or challenge. “So why don’t you?”

He chuckled. “Well, it’s not that easy. Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracle—immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture … they all carry similar requirements—and similar penalties. They claim that if I don’t live by a specific code I will go to hell. I can’t imagine a God who would rule that way.”

“I hope you don’t let your students dodge questions that shamelessly.”

The comment caught him off guard. “What?”

“Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scriptures is stories … legends and history of man’s quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God’s hand?”

“Yes. As a scientist and the daughter of a Catholic priest, what do you think of religion?”
Vittoria, …. “Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same things. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.”

(Langdon) “So you’re saying that whether you are a Christian or a Muslim simply depends on where you were born?”

(Vittoria) “Isn’t is obvious? Look at the diffusion of religion around the globe.”

(Langdon) “So faith is random?”

(Vittoria) “Hardly. Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

p.328 For Sylvie, the church has always been an innocuous entity … a place of fellowship and introspection … sometimes just a place to sing out loud without people starting at her. The church recorded the benchmarks of her life—funerals, weddings, baptisms, holidays—and it asked for nothing in return. Even the monetary dues were voluntary. Her children emerged from Sunday School every week uplifted, filled with ideas about helping others and being kinder. What could possible be wrong with that?
It never ceased to amaze her that so many of CERN’s so-called “brilliant minds” failed to comprehend the importance of the church. Did they really believe quarks and mesons inspired the average human being? Or that equations could replace someone’s need for faith in the divine?