4 The Culture of Do and Tell

The main inhibitor of Humble Inquiry is the culture in which we grew up. Culture can be thought of as manifesting itself on many levels—it is represented by all of its artifacts, by which I mean buildings, art works, products, language, and everything that we see and feel when we enter another culture.5 But artifacts are not easy to decipher, so when we enter a new culture we find that we have to talk to people and ask them questions about what things mean. When we do that, we elicit the level of culture that I call espoused values such as freedom, equality of opportunity, individual rights, and other values that are often referred to as “our constitutional rights.”

When we compare some of the artifacts and behaviors ...

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