This reminds me of something Seymour Papert talked about when he was interviewed in "The Media Lab" by Stewart Brand, talking about an African conference on The

This reminds me of something Seymour Papert talked about when he was interviewed in "The Media Lab" by Stewart Brand, talking about an African conference on The New Math: "... At a certain point the Nigerian delegation stood up and walked out. It was quite dramatic -- they were dressed in beautiful African robes. Then the meeting broke up and I had this conversation with one of the people from the Nigerian delegation who went by. 'Why did you walk out, what's going on?' 'I can't talk to these Americans.' (Nobody thought of me as an American.) 'Why not?' 'Because they say what they mean.' "We're so brought up with the idea that communication fails when people don't say what they mean. The man explained, 'When two Americans have a conversation, each says what he thinks, and then there's a confrontation -- one's going to be right and the other one's going to be wrong. We don't do it like that. We sit around under the tree, and somebody says something, and somebody else does, and we talk and nobody has a position. It goes on for a long time, and maybe tomorrow, or eventually, everybody agrees on a position. Then everyone is right and there isn't anybody's point of view left out.'