This Patchwork Life

Every day is multicultural!

When we say “multicultural” our mind goes to the grand patchwork of society, a mixture of creeds, religions, nationalities, and so forth. Little do we appreciate that that is not the sole part of how much multi-culture affects our daily life.

There is such a thing as microculture.

We all know we are made of diverse identities; even within ourselves we exist as intrinsically multicultural beings, different identities shifting and affecting one another in order to service a whole integral identity, the great “I am…” as stated elsewhere.

There are also the other microcultures at work; those fostered by workplaces, family units, institutions, fanbases, and friend groups. Each one with their own identity, traditions, and practices as well as mentalities in interacting with one another, adopting an overall ethos in the manner they interact with the outside world and highly representative and contributing to the marvelous complexity of the human race.

This is also even within workplaces themselves, and departmental cultures; one side of the institution may be more community-inclined with its many members all too happy to participate in community activities even outside of office hours simply to socialize or to help one another out whereas yet another displaying despondency and reluctance brought about by a sense of powerlessness and delusion with the running of the place, therefore avoiding mingling. Yet another department making a weekly effort to go out for a drink outside of office hours just to enjoy others’ company.

Even linguistically, the way we define the world around us – code words to outline which department needs which resource; nicknames for people become the way we identify who to refer to for whatever, nicknames for items – I distinctly remember a black fire extinguisher we nicknamed “Penguin” as it was placed by a freezer, part of our fire emergency strategy, a printer we affectionately called “Bettina” for reasons only known to the secretary we had in that particular workplace for the time. Items and labels to things that are not used by anyone else in the world we know of – IEPs and MAPs in my line of work mean something else than for a bus service which I used to work for. A Portal in one workplace means something different to another I worked in.  

It makes me think…why is it easier for these to coexist with other microcultures better than all other identities? Is it because we relate less to them? Is it because they are less “personal” to us, so we find it easier to be less “zealous” about them? Should all of them be AS personal?

Perhaps it is far more a manner related to how we respond to affirmations against our identities and how they are presented to us; are they so weak that we need to put down others to make us feel better about them? Do they have a right to overpower those of others? 

What can we learn from our attitude towards our microcultures that we can transfer over to how we relate to the macroculture?