Culture - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 81

Figure 4-3. The Cultural Onion.
Symbols are words, images, objects, and gestures with special meaning to those in the culture.
Heroes are people, alive or dead, real or imaginary, who exhibit role model qualities. Rituals are
activities that are technically superfluous but socially essential, like how we say please and
thank you. All three can be seen as practices and are visible to the outside observer. The hidden
core is formed by values, defined as “broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over oth-
ers.” xcvi Our feelings about good and evil, danger, beauty, and nature are values, and they're ac-
quired in childhood. Practices come later. They are learned at school and work.
In a heroic effort to make the invisible visible, Geert Hofstede led a multi-national, multi-decade
research program to study cultural differences. He concluded that six dimensions - power dis-
tance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, pragmatism, and indulgence - offer
insight into what makes us tick differently. Let's take a look by comparing two countries.
Power distance describes the degree to which members of society accept and expect the unequal
distribution of power. In the United States where “all men are created equal,” the score is low re-
lative to China where formal authority, hierarchy, and inequality require no justification. As in-
equality continues to rise in the U.S. we can expect cultural resistance.