The Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Behind The Great Replacement Theory

Perhaps “wired” to serve in one particular way, but this isn’t just a problem between tribes in separate valleys, it inhibits communications and interactions between members of the same tribe for a number of reasons.

I began my career with mostly a “technical” background (electronics, electrical engineering, mathematics, computer science) but I claim that the main reason I successfully transitioned to “management” was that one course in Cultural Anthropology I took in community college.

The course was a basic intro, but it introduced me to the whole set of concepts surrounding “cultural identity” in a very creative way. Rather than plowing through introductions to multiple “cultures” existing in distinct parts of the world, he had us study the idea of “distinct cultures” but looking at the characteristics of American university fraternities and sororities.

Most of the students in the class just went “huh?”, but as someone who by then had lived in three different countries and visited almost 30 more, I just lapped it all up. A distinct culture has initiation rites, it has a distinct language or set of terminologies, it has “cultural markers” that allow members to recognize each other. Yup, this just made so much sense to me.

So then, I transferred this idea of “cultural anthropology” to my working world. In doing so, I realized that in the “high tech working world” there are distinct “Marketing Cultures”, “Sales Cultures”, “Management Cultures”, “Geek Cultures”, etcetcetc, with all the attendant “culture clashes” you would expect between competing views of how the world works.

Even in my “geek world” there are multiple distinct subcultures, with their rites of admission, distinct language and terminology, etc (ask a Unix kernel guy what he thinks about a Web front end developer, or an Apple programmer what he thinks about Bill Gates… :roll_eyes:)

So what happened? As I dug into this, I realize that my contribution was not going to be in just seeing things that could be built with newer technologies, but that I could be of value serving as a “translator” between the various cultures we all swim amongst.

To paraphrase Barbara Billingsley in “Airplane”, I was the one, when folks were finding it impossible to communicate, who could step in and say “It’s okay, I speak geek”.

Now, the point of this rant is to point out that we don’t have to surrender to the MAGAs to realize that they are operating within the constraints of their own distinct “culture”. If we want to influence, persuade or even just “outflank” them, we need to see them as a distinct culture, with their own operating parameters. Once we do that, we can figure out how best to merge with, co-opt, or work around them (and don’t ask me what I’m working towards, I’m still working on persuading them I’m not a threat! :laughing: )

Okay, genug. Hope this might resonate with a reader or two - if not, you might consider whether it’s because I’m from a distinct subculture, so can’t communicate using your framing… :smirk:

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