I understand within your cultural frame and value system, ethical behavior is defined with regards to other people's comfort. That's not true for Richard (not for the culture I was born in, for that matter; I don't much care if people around me feel comfortable, nor if they make me feel comfortable, although I do know how to code switch, and do so in professional settings so as to be successful in the US).
Cross-cultural fluency involves being able to interact with people with different value systems. People in the Middle East, China, or Russia will have very different views of what the right thing is from yourself.
I've almost never met a person who tried as hard to do what *they* (not you, not me) believed was right as Richard.
Using cross-cultural fluency to defend Richard Stallman, who doesn't care one iota about cross-cultural fluency, and constantly embarrasses people inside and outside his own culture, is weird.
From within Richard's cultural frame, he's doing the right thing in both the large and the small.
Making people feel uncomfortable, embarrassing people, and otherwise are perfectly valid tactics for achieving change in many cultures; just not the one you're from. The extreme emphasis on politeness is very Western (although many Confucian cultures have something similar in the concept of face).
And although it might seem weird to you for me to be making arguments from cross-cultural fluency, Richard would be a hypocrite if he were making an argument from cross-cultural fluency, but he's not, and I'm not Richard.
I've made the same argument to Americans acting inappropriately in all sorts of countries, even though in many of those cultures neither had (not, often, valued) cross-cultural fluency. I'm sorry, but you're being wrong in both the large and small things, just as much as an American in Iran or Japan expecting everyone to behave like them, and talking about how people are either jerks or overly generous when they behave differently, or when Americans talk aabout how cultures have bad attitudes towards children/women/education/civil rights/etc., or are just plain weird.
If it makes you feel better, Richard is verbally hostile towards men too. The "verbal abuse" is equal opportunity.
And all that said, a lot of immigrants get fired in the US for what's perceived to be inappropriate cultural behavior here. African Americans too, for that matter. Many communication styles are perceived as verbally abusive within US culture. That doesn't make it right.
My experience is the international business community has generally done the best work here, since they needed to create organizations which work across cultures, and that's difficult if all employees take the type of myopic view you're taking. Good starting points include Hofstede, the Culture Shock series, Neurotribes, as well as Googling "[insert-country-name] business culture" (the country should NOT be Western or Southern Europe, which are too similar to the US).
If you choose to go down that route, it will take a few years, but it will make you more successful in your career, and a better person in your personal life.
This doesn't seem consistent with the commonly accepted meaning of "comfortable." By their very nature things that make someone uncomfortable are things they care about. If they truly didn't care they would not experience discomfort.
Are there really cultures where inflicting suffering on others is not "within their cultural frame and value system"?
Yes!
* Consider treatment of children in Korea, where kids are forced, by their parents, to study 16 hours per day.
* Consider tactics used in many resistance movements against oppressive governments in Slavic cultures (and similar tactics recently adopted by oppressed African American communities in the US), which are explicitly about making people feel uncomfortable about wrongs.
* Consider Spartan culture (or any other macho culture). Even in the US, why would Marines do the things they do?
* Consider historical Catholic culture of denial and self-sacrifice.
* Consider "drink from the firehose" culture at elite tech schools like MIT.
* Heck, consider the way many cultures temper kids to be resiliant to discomfort (e.g. dipping in cold water in parts of Eastern Europe)
... and so on. Contemporary progressive Western culture is almost uniquely focused on concepts like fun and personal comfort.
The way your comment conflates "comfort" with "things they care about" is an example of that.
Broadly speaking, Western culture is also (both currently and historically) more focused than most other cultures on surface politeness. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" is an middle/upper-class WASP concept. In China, if you're fat, you'll get called fat. That's not uniquely US (Japan is even further in that direction), but it is a place a lot of people have to code switch in the US, since the US (with a few other countries, like England, Germany, and Japan) are outliers there. I can't raise my voice in a professional middle-class US workplace. I can do a lot of things on international conference calls (to the relief of both sides!) which would get me instantly fired in the US.
It's a signalling and oppression mechanism too; if a construction worker learned to code but didn't learn to code switch US cultures too, they'd likely never achieve socioeconomic mobility. Google would say they're an aggressive, sexist, white male (or if not white, at the very least, not a "culture fit"). It's how I let you know I'm part of your in-crowd.
Fortunately, I can code switch now!
> By their very nature things that make someone uncomfortable are things they care about. If they truly didn't care they would not experience discomfort.
You're conflating two different things (which are deeply conflated in US culture, so this isn't a comment about you). I'll give a couple of examples:
* I care about personal growth. Personal growth requires discomfort. Whether that's grinding through a complex math text, learning to code switch through immersion in a different culture, being told I'm wrong, or otherwise.
* My girlfriend has a mental health issue. She cares about resolving it. US culture has conditioned her to "manage" it by seeking ways which avoid "triggering" situations. As far as I can tell, that's leading to a spiral where it's getting worse. In my culture, you'd do the opposite; you'd seek out those situations to habituate to them (which is exceptionally uncomfortable).
All those cultures have a goal in mind when inflicting discomfort. Does Stallman?
Yes, making someone feel uncomfortable is considered bad everywhere, but in many parts of the world, it's the same kind of bad as using the wrong fork to eat your salad in the US. No one cares. No one will argue it's not better than using the Right Fork, but whatever. (And yes, there are cultures where eating etiquette and ritual is super-important).
That's even true in parts of lower-class US culture. If I'm on a construction site, and there are two workers:
- One is impeccably polite, and never makes me uncomfortable
- One always helps me out in a bind; if I need a shift covered, or my family has an emergency, but goes out of their way to tease everyone
Guess who'll be preferred? It's the opposite from elite British society (which the US descends from), where I can conquer your country and exploit your people so long as I'm polite and don't lose my temper.
And yes, different types teasing and other ways of making people intentionally feel uncomfortable for NO reason are parts of many cultures, and no one cares.
As a footnote: As far as I know, Stallman does have a goal in inflicting discomfort: he is advocating for a particular set of social changes. Is that an effective way to do it? Probably not. But no one's perfect. Stallman works from first principles and kind of ignores prevailing culture.