St. Peter would say NO!

I was furious. I admit, I'm an emotional person, I get happy, annoyed, satisfied, or frustrated easily and get over them fast. But I rarely get really angry. Today, I'm furious.

During today's class, we talked about different culture has different value priorities. While American might believe honesty to be the most important value, Eastern culture (Chinese, Korean) might consider loyalty to family and friend takes priority to personal honesty. To further demonstrate his point, the instructor show us a survey given to people in different countries for their opinion on honesty.

People are given the following scenario: you and your best friend were driving in a residential area. Your friend went over the speed limit, and accidentally ran over someone. The question was would you lie under oath that your friend is not speeding?

Over 95% American refuse to lie, while 48% of Chinese remain honest, and 26% of Korean insist they would tell the truth and send their friend into jail.

The idea is to show that for American, telling the truth might be very important; but for Chinese and Korean people, stay loyal to their friend is more important. There's no right or wrong about personal value priorities,  but as project managers, we need to be aware that each team member has their own value based on their experience, knowledge and culture.

After the discussion, a classmate raised his hand and said: I know you (instructor) said there's no right or wrong when it comes to value priority, but if St. Peter is those country, St. Peter would tell those people "NO, this is WRONG!"

The class was quiet for a while, and I said: "I'm sure there's a Chinese god believes it is more important to stay loyal to your friend and family than honesty." And guy said to me: "what did you say?!" At this moment, the instructor stepped in and said: we should all respect other people's value. And we moved on.

In fact, I was FURIOUS! My face was burning and I want to stand up and said "HOW DARE YOU! How dare you judge my people in the name of your god?!" I wanted to slap his fat, obnoxious, self-righteous  face.

I guess there will always be people go around say "I'm right, You're wrong" in the name of religion, personal value, social "norm".... All you need to do is stand your ground and push back.