The basis for successful communication is influenced by the values of its participants. The foundation and construction of any message is connected to the ability of the author and the user to share commonalities of vocabulary, knowledge and reason that allow them equal understanding about its delivery.
Limitations exist when cultural values impose barriers to its acceptance or agreement because of the positions held by the author and his intended users.
Whether rhetoric and persuasive discourse can be considered valid is fluxible depending upon the time and place of its utterance and the context of its meaning.
But NOT necessarily in its content.
The When, Where, to Whom and Why …that I was born with carried significant weight on how I would grow, develop and communicate (internally) and with others.
But did these conditions of my existence control me or just influence my responses and subsequent actions?
Did my formal education and its curriculum form me and can I challenge it now, if the measurement of my academic success or failure was based upon its tests of my competence, awareness and providing the right answers to the right people?
Did my birth in a First World country compared to someone from a Third World country preclude my sense of who I am and why I am here? The immediate answer might be a resounding Yes! and I know more & live comfortably too.
However, the values that either culture instilled must still have an echo, which enables me to adapt, understand and survive accordingly, even as a stranger in a strange land.
Then who is better off by contrast because of these unique physical experiences? Presumably me, who has had more material comforts, but do they necessarily make me happier, smarter or even wiser when the obstacles to my contentment, although different in scale and substance, still force me to question the value of my own existence. For then neither situation would be preferable.
But if my situation was reversed and I moved to the other’s place, what would happen to me and how would what I had learned previously allow me to cope with this new reality?
Adapt or perish; migrate or stagnate OR ________________________?