It’s time to master Cross-Cultural Communications in this country! If you ask me, Cross-Cultural Communication needs to be made a core subject at every efficiently functioning university of Georgia because this is what our times are dictating persistently.
Historically, Georgia has never been standing apart (except the Soviet period of 1921-1991) from the rest of the world. Every possible species of invader has been here trying to teach us their ways and means, and the language of-course, but when it comes to correct and useful communications with other cultures, our people need to know more, much more. The globalized world means that the global society is gradually acquiring global sense of etiquette, but before this happens and starts functioning to a full extent, nations have to learn how to introduce their ethical culture to other peoples and vice versa, learn other peoples’ manners and models of behavior. Georgia may not be exclusion here! Economic success of any nation, which probably is the most important tool of human survival, has come to depend on how tight are the links of that nation with other countries. This is called an ‘interdependent world’, to use one of those commonest of terms. Hence, in that interdependent world Georgia needs to find its most fitting niche – snug and cozy and comfortable. And to do that, we have to reasonably and conveniently communicate with other cultures in order for us to simply make a living. And this will never be feasible unless we learn the technique of that reasonable communication. The theoretical knowledge is in place. What remains to be done is the acquisition of practical know-how. To compress the entire course of Cross-cultural Communication into one brief newspaper article would be impossible, but let’s at least present the gist of it right here and right now! Conventionally, cultures might be divided into Individual and Collective ones – this is at least what modern text-books are saying. Georgia seems to be stuck somewhere in the middle, but looks more like collective culture whereas the Western culture is absolutely individualistic. Further comment or the detailed explanation will take us very far away into the issue. This comment is just a faint signal on what we represent as a culture in general terms. There is another categorization that I would love to throw in – the High- Context and the Low-Context cultures.  Again, Georgia could be placed somewhere in-between them. The former comprises mostly the oriental nations and the latter will embrace purely- Western and Western-oriented countries. The world is almost completely globalized, but it remains amazingly motley, and Georgia is part of the palette, having its own unique shades and hues. Let’s take my today’s piece of mind as a hint for the arriving necessity to stay unique as we are, but at the same time to organically inscribe ourselves into the entire global gamut of colors. Otherwise, we will never make it towards our doubtless and complete recognition by the rest of the world, which is a definite prerequisite for our happy survival – both physical and spiritual.