CROSS-CULTURAL AWARENESS FOR AUSTRALIANS AND SGI MEMBERS : a written record of a speech presented for HUMANISM AND CULTURE OPEN DAY at SGI Melbourne Community Centre on 27 September, 1992
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It is indeed a great honour and pleasure for me to speak in front of you Australian SGI members including so many guests today. The purpose of my visit at Monash University is to do research on multicultural education in Australia. First, as a poetry lover, let me mention one thing about nature that I have noticed recently. That is cherry-blossoms are still in bloom here in Melbourne. I say they are still in bloom because the ones in Japan are really short-lived. The wind and particularly rain blow away petals of the blossoms easily, thus creating an image and sensitivity that nothing remains the same, nothing lasts long, and nothing is eternal. Whatever foreign country you are in, or whatever person of a different culture and ethnicity you encounter, you can't take things for granted. We tend to think that basic good manners and etiquette are universally understood and practised in the same way; we may not realise that what constitutes good manners in one society may have exactly the opposite effect in another. In fact, Eastern etiquette may be bothersome or even inscrutable in a Western culture and vice versa. On the day of my arrival in this country someone stole my expensive videocamera. It was so embarrassing, but luckily enough it was insured, so I phoned the insurance company. As there are dishonest people everywhere in the world, I wanted to convince them that I was not telling a lie to extract money from them, and began to say that I'm a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Their response was: "What does it have to do with the theft?" I visited one of my Australian friends in a mental hospital the other day. One of the patients asked me if I was a patient or a doctor. Patients and doctors seem to look alike in this country! Egalitarianism at least on the superficial level is so great that those who put on airs looking and sounding special, rich, and elitist can be easily put down. This kind of attitude has two sides to it. On one hand, it allows you to feel free without so much social pressure that makes you look and behave according to your social rank. On the other hand, it prevents many who are brilliant or could, with a little work be brilliant, from striving for excellence. Immigrants from where hard-work ethics prevail often despise Australians as lazy people. One of the reasons why some Australian-born ethnic groups especially those of Anglo-Celtic origin who came here as convicts or from the lowerclasses dislike Asians is because of fear that those people may take over their jobs and accumulate wealth through excessive endeavour.
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