Cultural incidents

The way to prevent cultural incidents is to stop assuming that other people are like us. If we didn’t expect the local people to behave like we do, we would no longer be critical when they didn’t. If we were no longer put off by their behavior, there would be no more cultural incidents, and if there were no more incidents, it would not be so difficult to be culturally effective.

To stop expecting other people to behave like we do is a two-step process: first we have to realize this expectation, and second we have to start expecting the local people to simply be themselves.