“Otherness” VS. “Culture”
“Otherness” VS. “Culture” Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. April, 2023 For most of my career, I have been postulating, propounding, proselytizing, and pleading that the concept “culture” includes all kinds of diversity in addition to its ...
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Human Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence
Milton J. Bennett, Ph. D. March 12, 2023 Intelligence, including pattern recognition, is indeed an algorithm as Harari (Sapiens) and others argue, and thus can be implemented either biologically (in the brain) or digitally (in computers) ...
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Meeting the (Intercultural) Future
Meeting the (Intercultural) Future Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. January 11, 2021 When we think of building a more equitable and inclusive future, the task may seem overwhelming, especially in the shadow of reactionary political ...
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Why America Was Great
Why America Was Great Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. August 28, 2020 Much ink has flowed about the greatness of American ideals (and the failure in so many cases to enact them). Ideals are important, ...
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Why Doesn’t This Feel Weirder?
Why Doesn’t This Feel Weirder? Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. March 28, 2020 I am an American currently in Milan, where I arrived from Washington State in the US just a few days before the ...
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RPCV: Really Prepared for Corona Virus
RPCV: Really Prepared for Corona Virus Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. March 22, 2020 As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, for years I’ve regaled friends and audiences with stories about two years spent on a ...
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Power and Paradigms
Power and Paradigms Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. www.idrinstitute.org July 21, 2019 I suppose most readers of this blog will agree that the current political situation in the US constitutes an abuse of power. What ...
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Intercultural Consciousness
Intercultural Consciousness By Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. January 30, 2019 In his book Origin of Consciousness…, Julian Jaynes suggests that self-consciousness as we now experience it is a relatively new phenomenon that developed around 3,000 ...
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We are all Losers
We are all Losers By Milton J. Bennett The losers in the current US presidential travesty are not just those of us who voted against a bigoted ignoramus, nor are they just the misguided people ...
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Darwin on Trump: Size Does Matter
Darwin on Trump: Size Does Matter By Milton J. Bennett Size matters, but it doesn’t make you superior. I’m talking about finch beaks, of course. In the last political campaign we heard a lot about ...
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President Trump and the Insufficiency of Love
President Trump and the Insufficiency of Love By Milton J. Bennett Since the electoral decision of 11/9 (the world will never be the same), John Lennon’s “Love is All you Need” has been looping in ...
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President Trump and the Irony of American Exceptionalism
President Trump and the Irony of American Exceptionalism By Milton J Bennett As a US American who spends a lot of time in Europe, I have apparently picked up a tendency to appreciate irony. So ...
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A Clash of Paradigms
A Clash of Paradigms By Milton J. Bennett The extremist Islamic State is positioning itself against the rest of the world. Since much of that world is Islamic, Huntington's "clash of civilizations" is more clearly ...
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Tolerance Is Not Good Enough
Tolerance Is Not Good Enough by Milton J. Bennett Recent events in France show the limitations of tolerance, and we interculturalists could be suggesting some more respectful and ethical responses to this tragedy. Paradoxically, tolerance ...
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Culture is not like Personality
Culture is not like Personality by Milton J. Bennett To paraphrase H.L.Menken, For every question there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. The question "what is culture?" is particularly conducive to producing ...
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The Mismeasure of Intercultural Competence
The Mismeasure of Intercultural Competence By Milton J. Bennett In his excellent book, The Mismeasure of Man, biologist and science historian Stephen Jay Gould points out the fallacy of assuming that "intelligence" is a measurable ...
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Culture is not like an iceberg
Culture is not like an iceberg By Milton J. Bennett With all due respect to theoreticians who continue to use the iceberg metaphor to describe culture, I think it's time to retire the image altogether ...
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