COVID-19: Universal Culture Shock, part 2

I was encouraged to hear that many identified with what I outlined in yesterday's blog post, so here's the next installment!  Yesterday I identified that we were all in a state of culture shock from the speed at which life has changed due to COVID-19.  Today I'd like to share three stages of culture shock (as described by Grunlan and Mayers, 1988) as well as three possible outcomes as we navigate the stages.

The first stage of culture shock is fascination.  Things are new, perhaps somewhat exciting.  For introverts like myself, there was a sense that it might not be so bad to spend all day every day at home.  Think about the memes we saw on FB about introverts, quilters, gamers, etc.  Depending on your situation and your personality, you might still be here.  However, I think most people moved through this stage fairly quickly!

The second stage is rejection.  The fun passes and the challenges become readily apparent.  Everyone is on Zoom, so internet quality declines.  The toilet paper is not restocked at the stores very quickly.  You can't accomplish the same things at the same pace as before.  According to Grunlan and Mayers (1988), "...the way of doing things in the new culture may seem capricious, without design or purpose.  The newcomer becomes frustrated in attempting to function in the new culture by applying the 'rules' of his or her own culture" (p. 23).  The difficulty in learning the new set of "rules" and how to operate in this current situation leads to frustration and resentment.  We look for people to blame, are discontent, and we emotionally "reject" this situation.  We long for when life was "normal" or even outwardly reject the government's guidelines.  Many of us are in this stage!

The third stage of culture shock is recovery.  We learn how to operate within this new "culture" and adjust our behavior to match the current realities.  We accept the things that have changed and look for ways to operate within the new "rules."  Our level of frustration decreases.  We have changed, but not the situation around us.  God created humans as adaptable beings and we learn and change as we make peace with our situation.  Perhaps a few of us are on our way to recovery.

As we go through these stages, there are 3 possible outcomes: going native, going anti-native, or empathy & identification:

Here in this diagram, your old culture is a square and the new culture is a circle.  If you go native, you fully reject your old culture and embrace the new one, becoming somewhat like a circle within the circle.  If you go anti-native, you retain your old culture and attempt to make the new one around you match it.  Neither of these are sustainable because we can't completely leave our old culture behind and a new culture will never fully match our old one.  Instead, we can aim for empathy & identification.  Here you retain aspects of your old ways, but your edges become a bit rounded in order to fit into the new reality.  The new culture stretches a bit to accommodate the addition of someone (all of us in this case) with a different culture.

Obviously, we all hope this new season of staying home and social distancing does not continue long.  However, it is continuing long enough that we need to find a way to adapt so that we can function as best as possible in the meanwhile.  As we reach a place of recovery, the frustration will lessen, which is currently keeping us in conflict with ourselves and our world.  In the next installment of this series I'll look at how we get there through a process called acculturation.

So where do you see yourself in this progression of culture shock?  Can you identify the biggest stressors in your new culture?  Can you release yourself from the expectation that you will function as if life is normal?  In times of culture shock, our productivity decreases.  We are internally processing a lot of new data and it bogs down our system.  Maybe you need to take that nap (unless you have a toddler...good luck!) or watch a movie.  Go for a walk if it's allowed where you live.  Allow yourself to process all of this instead of beating yourself up about what you're not accomplishing.  Hopefully you have an understanding boss.  If not you'll have the additional challenge to look at other ways to make accommodations for yourself in this season.  Stay tuned for part 3!

Allison, N.E. (2002). Class notes from Applied Anthropology. Toccoa Falls College.

Grunlan, A.G., & Mayers, K.M. (1988). Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective. Zondervan Publishing House.