Mission Statement
Discussing, Describing, and Defining Culture and its Impact on our World
At a nexus web conference in March 2021, giants like Hariri, Kahneman, and Thomas Friedman gave a picture about what is going on in the world and what they expect the future to be. Hariri was eloquently elaborating on how history is about storytelling. Not just about the past, but also about the present and the future. For him, storytelling is about giving meaning to the bits of information we all get every second.
Friedman was picturing how trends like globalization, digitalization, and the climate and energy transition are accelerating and deepening. Affecting us too deep in our brains. Including the way, algorithms are influencing us in our preferences and opinions by the way they make use of big data. Friedman said that we have to tackle these urgent global problems by complex, adaptive coalitions.
Kahneman was rather reluctant to make sweeping statements. He said simply: but there is no we.
This is the heart of the problem. If there would be an elected world government, all the problems could be tackled from one point of view. But there is not such a centralized decision-making unit.
What we see is fragmentation and polarization between “Identity groups” originating from cultural and religious “clans”. Some of them feel neglected in liberal open democracies where the rule of law is prioritizing equal treatment. The need to be seen and recognized is of course a precondition to live in peace with each other. But parallel to this struggle there is also an urgent call not to forget that there is a need to look into the future and solve the accelerating and deepening global problems. We are in this together.
Purpose Of This Site
At this website, we will focus on the need for a new narrative. We will do that in different “windows”:
- Special editions of the Culture-Impact Journal.
Four times a year papers will be published with a coherent theme. All special editions will show how Culture is affecting societal-politic narratives.
- News and examples on the 7 Mental Images of National Culture.
News and examples on the 7 Mental Images of National Culture. The dimensions of what constitutes culture are independent but, in real life, they interact. The sum of parts is something new. Happily, this diversity is not endless. Constant confrontation with real-life consequences shows that it is possible to describe seven combinations. We call this the 7 grammar systems of culture. These grammar systems have a tremendous influence on (political and societal) issues. To understand the differences in how leadership and democracy are interpreted you need to go back to these 7 grammar systems. We call these grammar systems “Mental Images because even the “picture” people have in their minds if they think and talk about their society is caused by the grammar system of their culture. Each mental image represents a cluster of countries that have certain characteristics (scores) in common. Each cluster has a different style of leadership and decision-making. In total 26 of these systematic differences have been charted.
- Focusing on Culture and Art.
Art is enabling human beings to be in the shoes of somebody with a completely different perspective. We can empathize with the life of people from a distant past as well with people from cultures that geographically are remote. We will show examples and even make art available.
- Blogs.
The publishers and individual members of the editing board for the special editions will write short notes about their opinions on actual developments.
- Discussions.
We invite all readers to give ideas and feedback on the central issue.: how to develop a new narrative for the urgent challenges we are confronted with.
- Unity in Politics.
There are a number of outstanding organizations fighting to fix our democracy by way of uniting elected officials. No labels are one of them. They have been successful in The House of Representatives, where the Problem Solvers Caucus (PSC) was created. This Caucus consists of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. In spite of the ongoing polarization, this group (The PSC) in Washington DC has had many successful meetings with the President of the USA and Members of Congress resulting in several Bills passing and or being signed into law. Because we see this as a concrete example of what we are aiming at, we will keep you informed about their efforts.
