Transcriber: Saulo Castro Delgado Reviewer: Yanyan Hong
You are unique, just like everybody else.
This is something I say often with a joking undertone.
If you think about it, though, this is actually very true.
We all have our unique background and experiences that have shaped us
and made us who we are today.
This diversity is sometimes something that I find extremely beautiful.
Yet somehow I look around and often see society stuck in silo or box thinking,
even though there is so much to learn from each other.
Some of this diversity is visible.
Some of it is not.
An important thing for all of us is the sense of belonging.
″Diversity is being invited to the party.″
″Inclusion is being asked to dance.″ But belonging.
Belonging is dancing like nobody is watching.
So what if you don't fit into one of these societal silos?
And is there really a person who only fits into one?
Let's take myself as an example using a seemingly very simple question.
A question that I sometimes struggle with. Where are you from?
Simple, right?
Four words. Easy icebreaker question.
Yet I never quite know how to answer this question.
And sometimes my answer changes depending on who is posing the question
or the situation that I’m in.
Essentially, my answer depends on which cultural silo I am in in that moment.
Of the 17 and a half million people residing in the Netherlands on
the 1st of January 2021, 14% were born abroad.
They came to the Netherlands as migrants.
Another 11.4% of the population were born in the Netherlands
as children of migrants.
This makes it an international melting pot of cultures
and one that is very attractive to people wanting to move to Europe.
And as the concept of crossing borders
and moving abroad has become easier compared to the previous generations,
with our modern technology it’s an easy transportation,
I have no doubt this number will only increase.
And yes, as you may have guessed, I am one of them.
I was born in the UK to a Belgian mother and a Dutch father.
My elementary school memories are great.
Yet there was also a lot of confusion
because at the time we lived in the Netherlands
but I attended school in Belgium.
So even though through my parents heritage and through my passports,
I fit in both silos.
I actually never fully felt like I fit into one.
And then when I was 12, another layer of complexity was added to my mix
when we moved to Houston, Texas, for two years,
followed by a move to a small coastal town outside of Barcelona called Citges
for the next four.
So by the time I was 18,
I had lived in five different countries.
And so I grew up and got shaped by different cultures,
not really fitting or wanting to fit into one cultural silo or box.
So as you can see, where am I from is a complicated question.
And I often ask myself which cultural silo fits me best.
Sometimes I say the Netherlands, sometimes I say Belgium.
Sometimes I say both.
And none of these answers are truthful.
Yet they do not feel like the truth to me
because the person that I am today was also shaped by other cultures,
the cultures that I grew up in and the cultures that I love.
And so naturally, I don’t like silos or boxes.
As humans, we like to understand everything that is happening around us.
And because there is information flying on us,
we create so-called cognitive misers or shortcuts
to help us process
all the information that comes at us all day long.
So a simple answer, ″I’m from the Netherlands″,
which is not a lie and also not a full truth,
is great
because we might associate certain aspects
to somebody with a Dutch nationality.
For example,
Dutch people may be called stingy or direct or both.
So it is easier for us to understand
with a tendency to kind of put people in silos or boxes.
And this is what we have come to known as unconscious bias.
These unconscious biases, they help us to make sense of the world.
A colleague of mine mentioned,
in a meeting we had discussing unconscious biases,
if you were to run into a bear in the forest,
you would quickly try to flee, the association you have with the bear
it’s that it’s dangerous.
You act by instinct.
There is no time to first observe the bear.
To add to this concept,
there is a lot of research that shows
we tend to like people that are similar to us
and this is for several reasons.
So one of them is that we tend to think
that people who are similar to us are more likely to like us.
And we, as humans,
we really like to be liked.
And funnily enough,
research has shown that people are likely to see self expansion opportunities
when interacting with someone who is similar to them
rather than somebody who is different to them.
Even though a dissimilar person would actually be more likely
to provide new knowledge and experiences.
So does that mean that we are all wired to this silo and box thinking?
So, although perhaps inevitable,
I don’t like putting people in boxes.
Just ask any of my friends and they will tell you
I go to great lengths to try and explain
why silo or box thinking might restrain us as a society to be more inclusive.
Yet a few years ago, I came across the concept of Third Culture Kids,
which was first described in the 1950s by US sociologist Ruth Hill Unseem.
Third Culture Kids
are people who are raised in a culture other than their parents’
or the culture of their country of nationality,
and had a different environment
during a significant part of their child development years.
So American sociologist Ruth Van Reken
has done a lot of research on these third culture kids.
And she says that these people tend to have a broader worldview
and are more culturally aware.
But she also warns that the life as a third culture kid
can create a sense of rootlessness and restlessness
where home is everywhere and nowhere.
So maybe this is my cultural silo.
A silo for those who do not have one.
And if we were to open up the silo or unpack this box, so to say,
it will contain some Dutch, some Belgium, some American
and some Spanish boxes.
Whereas for another third culture kid,
the unpacking of this box would most likely reveal a bunch of other boxes.
This silo contains many differences
because most of our culture kids
most likely did not grow up in the same countries
or have the same nationalities.
Yet it is the experience of being raised in different cultures
which creates this box.
And these individuals find themselves in, for example,
their sense of rootlessness and restlessness,
where home is everywhere and also nowhere.
So this their culture kids silo is of course not my only silo,
nor is it the only silo that contains differences.
I am, for example, also a woman,
and if we were to unpack that box,
it will most likely not contain all the same boxes
as say, my best girlfriends would.
So do we really think in silos or are all these silos and boxes
on this multidimensional plane all touching each other and overlapping?
Have you, for example, noticed that when you talk to somebody who is seemingly
completely different to you,
you tend to be surprised by how much you have in common with them?
I sure have.
Even if sometimes it takes a couple
of conversations before I get that realization.
But does that mean that we should only be
focusing on the similarities and ignore the differences?
I don’t think so.
Because when I try to visualise the society creative silos
and boxes in my mind
on this multidimensional plane outside of all these intersections
of all of our society made boxes or silos,
it’s actually where my opinion and then the magic happens.
This is where we grow and learn from each other’s differences.
And we, as a society, need these different pieces.
Much like, for example, if you were to go to IKEA to buy a cupboard
and you would come home to find that the cupboard’s box
only contained the screws,
you would not be able to build it.
You need other tools, other pieces like planks and bolts
and those little wooden things whose name I don’t remember.
You need them all to build this cupboard. And the cupboard is like all of us.
It is made of different pieces.
A cupboard alone doesn’t make a dining room.
You need chairs, a table, you need a lamp.
And depending on your style, you may need many or some accessories.
And all of these pieces making of this one room
may have things in common,
but they most certainly have things that are different.
But together they make a dining room.
And this dining room is, in fact only one of the many rooms that make a house.
And just like that, we, as a society,
we need many different boxes with different types of content that make us
all individual humans. Individuals that respect each other’s differences
are the basis of a strong society, a society where we all belong,
a society where we can all dance like nobody is watching.
So to quote a really good friend of mine, let us meet where our differences overlap.