A Portrait of Our Culture and Technology

The main idea I want to share with you this evening is this: how does technology actually affect our lives and our culture? As Mongolians, culture is one of the key things that sets human beings apart from other creatures. It encompasses our inner beliefs, our attitude toward life, and perhaps our religious convictions — all of these combined are what we understand as culture. So what does the world actually think Mongolian culture is? Now, when it comes to our own origins, we ourselves say that, in some respects, we are destined by the highest heaven.

On the other hand, our nomadic tradition and way of life is also a major foundation of our culture. How does it compare with other countries? That has always been somewhat unclear. This is where a scholar named Hofstede comes in — starting in the 1960s and 1970s, he began comparing the cultures of different countries with one another. In particular, because the success or failure of a small business that a foreigner sets up when investing in another country can depend on the influence of that country's culture, large-scale comparative studies began to be carried out on this basis. Using the Hofstede Insights methodology, a study was conducted in 2014 that defined who Mongolians are. In terms of sample size, it wasn't a very large study — it surveyed about 50 young Mongolians, conducted in 2014.

But even though it was conducted on a small sample, I think it can still capture the general picture — our overall profile. Let me also clarify one more thing here. Compared with today's circumstances, at that time Mongolia's economy was seen as one of the next economies with great potential, moving toward the world's fastest-growing economic development. That is why international companies, believing that operating in Mongolia had become inevitable, also helped fund this study. Unfortunately, looking back now, seven or eight years later, we have to admit that Mongolia has not turned out to be a country that attracted much attention from the world at large.

Of course, we were compared with several countries — comparing exactly what makes us different from and similar to others, using five indicators. The first one — on the slide behind me with the British flag on it — is that Hofstede Insights has, of course, also studied the English. Do pay attention to what kind of differences there are. In the chart at the bottom, Mongolia is compared with China, Russia, India, South Korea, and the United States. So if we look at the indicator called power distance, for example, our northern neighbor tends to revere authority, whereas we are very different from our northern neighbor in that respect.

In fact, we're not even inclined to depend on people in positions of authority — in this respect we score lower than even the United States and South Korea. But overall, the British and Mongolians are similar here — similar in terms of power distance — and this is considered an indicator that has a positive effect on development. The reason power distance is low is that, within large business organizations, a great deal of fear doesn't build up. Discussions between a senior manager and a specialist don't create major problems — people can speak openly and freely — and in that sense, this is one of the indicators with a positive effect on development. Next comes the concept of masculinity. This one is quite interesting, because — interestingly — Britain is also among the countries with fairly high masculinity.

Mongolia is described as an extremely "macho," extremely competitive society — why is that said? Because, compared with countries in other regions, we score very high on masculinity. There are a few things behind this. First, high masculinity generally means a competitive attitude toward everything — an interest in competing — though it can also come with being somewhat careless, or perhaps a bit weaker when it comes to showing care and consideration for others; the higher the masculinity, the more that kind of profile tends to appear. So Mongolia is counted among the countries with the very highest masculinity scores in the world. I'm not a culture researcher myself, but from what I've read, excessively high masculinity may also be associated with a tendency to resolve problems by force — in some respects, underlying it.

So this may have a somewhat negative effect on that thing we call social cohesion. We should keep this in mind, because this has become one of the indicators representing who we are, and we need to pay attention to it. On the question of who we are — third, how much do we base our decisions on the individual? At what level do we place ourselves?

For example, this indicator shows how I weigh a decision made by the group against my own personal decision. This is the concept of individualism. Mongolia scores very high here — highly self-reliant, based on the individual. In English, it's worth thinking about how much difference there is between the two words "I" and "We." How do we relate to that?

For example, the concept of "we" — how much bigger is the "we" that we hold, compared with "me"? That's what this shows, which makes it quite an interesting indicator. But this individualism also has a positive effect on development. Because putting one's own views and one's own goals first, as an individual, is — at the organizational or societal level, on a larger scale — an important indicator of development based on individual initiative, so it's seen as an indicator with a positive effect on development. But looking at it from the other side, it also raises the question of how much value we place on collective decisions, and implicitly reflects how we approach rules and regulations. So that's this indicator.

The next indicator is: how do we make decisions under uncertain conditions? When the measures behind our future actions aren't clear, we are, in some respects, a country that feels somewhat uneasy about that. Now, the last one is time orientation — a very interesting concept as well. Because we have three tenses: past, present, and future. Some East Asian cultures tend to make decisions over the long term — take the olive tree, as an example: it's a tree that only bears fruit after 100 years.

And yet people make the decision to plant that tree today. They actually make that decision, knowing that the fruit will only be harvested 100 years later. I myself won't get to eat its fruit in my lifetime, and even my children may not eat it — it may be my children's children who begin to eat its fruit, and only fairly late in their own lives at that. So the attitude behind the decision to plant that olive tree is based on a very long-term expectation. Investors from various countries, of course, look at how long a time horizon underlies the decisions behind this kind of cooperation. So this is a very important indicator — and on this indicator, we Mongolians score quite low compared with, say, South Korea.

Of course, taken all together, these indicators let us see a general picture of who we Mongolians are. Now, second, there is the result of yet another study. It also looked at Mongolians — for example, how well do we understand our own inner emotions? How well are Mongolians able to express them? And how well do we notice and understand other people's emotions?

And how well are we able to manage and cope with those emotions? Comparing how people respond to various forms of emotion, three indicators were chosen on which Mongolia differs sharply from other countries. From this study: first, it turns out that we are a nation that doesn't understand other people's feelings, emotions, and moods very well — even when it's simply two Mongolians talking to each other. According to the comparative study, we just don't understand each other's emotions very well. And because of this, we don't function very well in our interpersonal relationships.

And looking at this indicator, in some respects it frightens me — it makes me think that a kind of "toxic complexity" may be forming in us. Because we have very high individualism, and second, very high masculinity, combined with a poor understanding of other people's emotions — this may be creating a complex that has a negative effect on our development. But there is also one good indicator. Compared with other countries, in terms of self-motivation, we are a nation with a strongly competitive attitude toward any problem, confident that we can overcome whatever difficulty arises. In general, when it comes to the future, we are highly competitive, highly interested and energetic, don't hold authority in especially high regard, and tend to play for short-term rewards. So looking at this along the dimension of time orientation, we Mongolians are a nation that, while oriented toward the future, still tends to stay very close to the present — to today.

In general, our important traits — the image on the slide behind me is a chart showing how different we are from the overall profile of the United States, and it can likewise be compared with other countries. The child shown against that red background is a way of illustrating who we are, portrayed through those five indicators. That's roughly what it looks like. So, that's the picture of our culture — who we are. Next: how does technology affect our lives? What exactly is technology?

By common definition, technology is what we use scientific knowledge for — to change our way of life and the surrounding environment we live in; that's what we consider technology to be. Technology, of course, matters a great deal. There is a great deal of interconnection between technology and culture. For example, culture itself gives rise to new technologies — they influence one another — and on the other hand, technology itself also changes culture in turn, so, naturally, we keep changing as well. And we, like the rest of the world, are changing along with it.

And I find one thing particularly interesting: within technology — specifically information technology — modern social media and mass-communication tools are being used enormously. I'll show a statistic on this for Mongolia. Worldwide in 2022, this compares how much time people spend using social networks. According to a study conducted in 2021 by a company called MMCG, the average Mongolian who is connected to the internet spends 4 hours a day on it — this is the highest usage rate in the world, a full hour more than the countries of the South American region that previously had the highest usage, spent on social networks. Second, the main factor — the main way this affects culture — is that the first thing that emerges is the concept of "connected individualism." I notice this myself, simply in everyday life.

For example, take our neighborhood associations, homeowners' associations, or alumni associations in daily life — how strong are they? Compared with other countries, they are very weak. We rarely meet or talk with one another, and we don't place much importance on it. If you ask people who the head of their district is, they hardly know. Who runs your homeowners' association? What are the costs involved? They barely know. Is there crime happening in this neighborhood?

People barely know what's happening around their own home. On top of that, under the influence of technology, social media has produced people who are connected to one another online, but who are becoming even more distant from real-life relationships and connections. And on top of that, we — who already didn't value authority very much — are valuing it even less now. So this is something we should study further: how is this, again, affecting our culture? But in general, it seems that both of these forces are intensifying the traits we already have, and if those traits are negative, it appears they are being made even worse. Second, technology is speeding up time.

All kinds of technology — not just information technology, but the major technologies used in industry — are saving time. Second, they are also helping to reinforce our vision of the future more strongly. These two time-accelerating factors are, in turn, affecting our culture as well. So my conclusion, simply put — looking at the general picture, the portrait — is this: technology may be pushing the profile and culture of Mongolians even further toward "today."

Looking at it along the dimension of time, our culture — and our attitude toward life — may be becoming faster and more competitive when viewed from the vantage of tomorrow or the day after, and, on the other hand, perhaps less cohesive. In that sense, my conclusion about how technology is affecting our culture is that it may be pushing us further into today. And of course, I imagine those of you who go on researching this field will explore it further. Thank you all very much.