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People Are Not Their Governments - the danger of stereotypes and dehumanization
19 Plays19 days ago
Fifty episodes in, and the conversation that matters most is still the simplest one: people are not their governments. Nations are not monoliths.
Thank you to every guest who shared their story, every listener who kept showing up, and to my wife, Bernie, whose support made this channel possible from the very beginning.
Episode 50 of The Auto Ethnographer returns to the idea that drives everything here. In a media environment that routinely collapses entire cultures into headlines and soundbites, it is worth slowing down to ask what we lose when we do that. We lose individual human beings. We lose nuance. And we lose the kind of truth that genuine cross-cultural understanding depends on.
Through two personal stories, including a candid exchange with a Russian friend named Oleg and a sidewalk dinner with a Vietnamese family in Hanoi, this episode examines the psychology behind cultural stereotyping, the role media and physical distance play in flattening human complexity, and the universal human values that connect people across borders, regardless of the governments that claim to represent them.
Most expats and global professionals already sense this. When you sit at someone's kitchen table in a foreign country, politics fades quickly. What remains is shared humanity: parents who want their children to thrive, elders who want peace, young people who want opportunity. These are not Western values. They are not tied to any religion, ideology, or passport. They are human values.
This episode is for expats living and working abroad, third culture kids, global professionals, and anyone who believes that lived cross-cultural experience reveals truths that headlines simply cannot. If intercultural communication, cultural intelligence, and understanding the world beyond your own borders matter to you, this conversation belongs on your list.
Governments act. People live. The more we hold onto that distinction, the harder it becomes to hate, and the easier it becomes to hope.
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Transcript
Instinctive Unity vs. Manufactured Divisions
00:00:00
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And you realize that that these things that divide us are often just manufactured by some government far away. But the things that unite us are ancient and they're instinctive.
Celebrating 'The Autoethnographer'
00:00:17
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The Autoethnographer, your weekly cultural trip around the world.
00:00:22
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Hello, this is episode 11. 50 of the autoethnographer. It's hard to believe that what began as a dream has come so far in just over a year.
00:00:34
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I am so thankful for all of the guests who've been on the podcast to speak about their experiences living and working abroad amongst cultures that are different from their own.
00:00:46
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I'm also extremely thankful for the listeners who tune in week after week to hear these human stories and and to share in the adventure of mingling with different international cultures.
Expressions of Gratitude
00:01:01
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Most of all, I need to thank my wife, Bernie, for... all of her patience when she's heard me grumble about the tech failures, being stressed about getting an episode out on time, and and deliberating who's going to be the next guest.
00:01:17
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Thank you very much for your understanding. Okay, before we go on, please be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss the next 50 episodes.
00:01:28
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Okay, now let's get into it. Today's 50th episode It feels especially fitting and urgent and in these times which seem to be burning with conflict and and fear and division.
00:01:43
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And it's this simple idea. People are not their governments. Nations are not monoliths. Governments make decisions.
00:01:55
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People make dinner, raise children, dream of a better life. And and that's where empathy has to begin.
Media Narratives vs. Individual Stories
00:02:05
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i want to spend the next a few minutes exploring what happens when we forget the truth and and what becomes possible when we remember it.
00:02:18
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Because right now, across continents and cultures, it's become far too easy to collapse millions of individuals into a single headline, into a single paragraph, into a single stereotype. and And when we do that, we lose sight of the human beings who live across the borders on the maps that we have, for example, hanging here in this room.
00:02:43
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So let's slow down and and take a look at this a little bit more closely.
00:02:49
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Why do we so often equate people with their governments? Part of it is, I think, psychological. Our our brains, they like shortcuts. It's easier to to say the Americans or the Iranians or the Israelis or the Russians than it is to acknowledge the millions of of different people and voices and beliefs and experiences that that live in each of those different societies.
00:03:15
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Part of it is also the way that that media works. National labels are convenient. They fit easily into the into the headlines and into the sound bites, but they well they they flatten complexity and they also erase all sense of nuance.
00:03:32
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and And part of it also is distance. When we don't personally know someone from a place, it becomes easier to imagine that that everyone there thinks the same way, votes the same way, and and believes in the same way.
Connecting Cultures Through Personal Stories
00:03:49
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Part of my mission here at the Autoethnographer has been to make the world smaller and to introduce people and cultures from different places.
00:04:01
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This truth is something that that anyone that has worked or lived outside of their home country, they know about different cultures. People within a nation, they they rarely agree on everything. In fact, frankly, they they disagree on most things.
00:04:19
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Listen, I have a good friend in in Russia that we have always kept in in close contact. So while many of my Russian friends have left the country after the war started nearly four years ago in Ukraine, my friend Oleg, which I'll call him here, he stayed in Moscow together with his family.
00:04:38
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I made an assumption that he supported the war and the the man who started it and that that he was patriotic. And wow, was I wrong.
00:04:49
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Once all of the consumer goods and brands had officially left the country, that the gray market had taken over. and And he went to a former Timberland store, now operated by a gray marketer, to buy his son some new Timberland boots.
00:05:07
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Well, it turns out that the price was now 300 US dollars, three times the amount that it was before the war had started.
00:05:20
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And then Oleg, he just blew up on the call and he criticized the actions of the government and of the of the leadership. The economy, it was it was tanking. The interest rates were over 20%. The currency value was cut by 75%. And andfl inflation was just running away.
00:05:39
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Even the food supplies were somewhat constrained because there were no local options to replace many of the previously imported goods, like cheese, for example.
00:05:50
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It turns out that that my assumption was was completely off. Oleg, he didn't support the country's government and the decisions at all. and And he was concerned with the well-being of his family.
Complexity of Perspectives
00:06:04
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And what the government had decided what they were doing, in his eyes, was completely unforgivable. These perspectives and these moments, they remind us that Real people are far more interesting than the narratives that are assigned to them by the by the media or even by ourselves.
00:06:26
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Let's go deeper into that. Most people in any country are are not political actors. They're not sitting in a war room or drafting policy. They're they're not shaping geopolitical strategy.
00:06:45
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They're their're parents, they're students, they're workers, they're caregivers, they're people that are just trying to make it through the day. Their concerns are human and immediate.
00:07:01
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Will my children be safe? Will I have enough to eat? Will I be able to afford my medicine? Will my family have a future?
00:07:12
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These are not the concerns of governments. These are the concerns of human beings. And when we forget that, we risk dehumanizing an entire population.
00:07:27
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To illustrate that, here's here's a quick story about an experience I had in Vietnam about three years ago. I was living in corporate housing in Hanoi while working for a local automaker there.
00:07:40
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Every evening I would go for a long walk after the sun set and the heat had had dissipated during the hot season. My company wasn't just ah an automaker, but they also were a builder and I would walk through one of the big building projects, a neighborhood full of villas that the company had erected the year before.
00:08:01
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On one particular evening, I was walking down a street where the occupancy rate was extremely low and the the new neighborhood was frankly still quite empty.
00:08:12
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In front of one of the few occupied buildings, there was a family that had set up a table and folding chairs and a charcoal grill on the sidewalk in front of their house.
00:08:23
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They were sitting there drinking beer, eating grilled meat and and and other prepared foods, just having a ah wonderful time. As I walked past, I i greeted them. they They waved back. And I was just about to pass when the head of the household, he he called out to me.
00:08:42
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I turned around and then he graciously you know motioned for me to to join them. I ended up sitting there for the evening, drinking and and eating and having a rudimentary conversation with a lot of help from Google Translate. we We couldn't understand each other very well, but the drinks and the smiles and the food they brought us together.
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By the time that i left, I had met his family. I told them about my grown children back in the United States. The world, it seemed really small around that table as the borders melted away.
00:09:18
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What did we not to talk about? The Vietnam War, as the Americans call it. The Vietnamese call it the American War.
00:09:30
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In the US, popular culture still fixates on this war from 50 years ago, mostly through film and through books. The war is still depicted in ah in a way that's got raw messaging and unfinished stories. Just say the word Vietnam in a room in the United States and it conjures up images in people's minds of the war, not of the culture, not of the country.
00:09:56
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But in Vietnam, a country that was decimated by American bombings, they have closure, full closure. No one talks about the war. The nation has moved on and is instead focused on its future and not fixating on its past.
00:10:15
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A tour boat operator in Ha Long Bay, he he told me about this, this moving on, this closure, about this national sentiment. And and frankly, sitting there for hours with his family, it drove that point home.
00:10:27
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It's moments like these that that reveal the truth that the headlines simply will not tell you.
Universal Human Needs
00:10:35
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So let's talk about the lowest common denominator.
00:10:40
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the universal human needs that that cut across every border, every language, every ideology. People want safety. They want shelter. They want food.
00:10:52
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They want health. People want belonging. People want hope. These aren't Western values. They're not Eastern values.
00:11:05
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They're not Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu values. These are human values. When you sit at someone's kitchen table, you know, politics, they fade away.
00:11:23
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And humanity, it moves to the forefront. You see the the parent who wants their child to thrive. You see the elder who wants peace in their final years. You see the the young person who wants opportunity instead of conflict.
00:11:44
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And you realize that that these things that divide us are often just manufactured by some government far away. But the things that unite us are ancient and they're instinctive.
00:12:00
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Am I an idealist? yeah Yes, probably. but But I firmly do believe that we are connected by humanity and we're divided by politics.
00:12:13
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But let's be honest, stereotypes, they harden during these times of conflict. Fear makes us generalize. Social media, it it amplifies anger and outrage. And and and distance, it it makes it easy to see the other as ah as a single entity.
00:12:34
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When we say the Americans, the Russians, the the Iranians, the Israelis, we erase millions of individual stories. We erase the people who dissent.
00:12:46
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We erase the people who are afraid. And we erase the people who want peace but feel powerless to bring it to be. And once we erase their individuality, it becomes easier to justify anger and suspicion or even hatred.
Exploring Culture Beyond Media
00:13:09
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That's the danger of equating people with their governments.
00:13:14
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So what's the alternative? And there is one. How do we see people as people again? Well, we start by listening to individuals, not to the headlines.
00:13:29
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We ask questions instead of assuming. Just think about the mistake I made with my friend Oleg. We should seek out stories from people who live between cultures.
00:13:41
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For instance, immigrants, expats, third culture kids. You know people who know what it feels like to be misunderstood. We remember that identity is layered.
00:13:55
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No one is only their passport nationality. That's what Dr. Jerome Dumetz told us last week in the last episode. No one is only their government's actions.
00:14:07
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And most of importantly, no one is the worst thing that their country has ever done. And we return to the mission of the podcast.
00:14:19
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The autoethnographer exists to explore culture through personal narrative. To remind us that the most powerful truths are found in lived experience, not in political rhetoric, not in headlines and not in social media posts.
00:14:39
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As we close, I want to return to the message that I began with. People are not their governments. Nations are not monoliths.
00:14:52
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Governments act. People live. And across the world, in every direction you look, the vast majority of people want the same things.
00:15:04
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Peace, stability, dignity, a chance to raise their families without fear. If we can hold on to that truth, even in moments of conflict, then we can resist the pull of dehumanization.
00:15:22
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We can resist the the urge to generalize. And we can begin to rebuild the fragile threads that connect us. Because the more we recognize each other's humanity, the harder it becomes to hate.
00:15:41
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And the easier it becomes to hope. That's my message on the 50th episode of The Autoethnographer. A message of hope,
00:15:52
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of peace and understanding. If this message resonated with you, be sure again to hit the subscribe button down below. With that, I'll say it like I always do, keep on driving.
00:16:07
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Thank you for joining us on today's journey. Please remember to like and subscribe to The Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment. For more information, visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com.
00:16:19
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