Don’t know that they don’t know?

So far as I could tell, Bill Weithas had scarcely been out of America when he was appointed worldwide CEO of Lintas.

So, during the lengthy handover, his predecessor in the post, Tim Green, took every opportunity to give Bill the benefit of his long years in international management. Especially the crucial but subtle differences between different ethnic groups. “The Flemish are very xxxx, but the Walloons are totally yyyy”. Ah!

When it came to New Zealand (had Tim actually been there?), he pronounced: “The problem with the Kiwis is that they don’t know that they don’t know.”

By this stage, Bill just looked terminally bored.

Sometime later, walking down Orchard Road in Singapore with him (on his first trip there), he stopped me and pointed at a neon sign.

“What do you see there, Rog?” he asked.

It was a Johnnie Walker logo. “And there… and there… and there…” McDonald’s, Fuji, Coca-Cola.

“It’s a global village,” he opined. “You just don’t need to know all that stuff about cultural difference anymore.”

Well, he certainly didn’t.

East is East

I went yesterday to the annual lunch of the Kipling Society in London and it brought to mind one of his most famous/infamous poems. If there’s one thing that Asians, especially Indians, of my acquaintance know by Rudyard Kipling, it’s

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

And many know the next line of this verse

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great judgement seat;

Clear evidence (if any were needed) of Kipling’s fundamental racism?

Yet very few seem to know the next two lines

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

Puts a different complexion on it, doesn’t it? I think the most he might be accused of is sexism (a concept not articulated in 1889).

In effect, what Kipling is saying is: people think that major cultural differences are impossible to bridge, but in reality, when there is trust and respect, these differences are of no importance.

Of course, he was born in Bombay and Hindi was his initial language. One of my favourite books, regularly re-read, is Kim, a sort of love-letter to India and the Indians.