CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 100
The population of most countries falls into one of two cultural categories: coconuts or peaches, according to culture experts. Coconuts (e.g. Germans or Russians) are hard on the outside but soft on the inside: not warm and friendly on the surface, but they open up and turn soft once they get to know you. Peaches, on the other hand, are soft on the outside but with a hard stone on the inside: on the surface Brits are polite and smile a lot, but have a closed off inner circle of friends. If a Brit tells you "you should come over for dinner sometime", this is merely them being polite and does not imply an invitation at all. (It becomes an invitation only if the day and the time are specified.)
Yet, cultures evolve. Over the course of history, coconuts have been selected by humans not for larger size but for thinner shells. As a result, through selective breeding generation after generation, coconuts nowadays have much thinner husks than millennia ago. Similarly, "coconut" cultures are getting less intimidating upon first encounter: hanging out with the Dutch is good fun nowadays.
Might there be a similar process of evolution for peaches? - Not necessarily, because the peach stone is not useful for humans. However, if we used apricots rather than peaches as the metaphor, we might be able to observe some evolution of the stone inside over the centuries, as apricots have an edible kernel in the middle of the stone (peaches don't).
It may sound like a communist slogan but it seems to be the case that globalisation is driving this process forward:
Coconuts and peaches of the world, unite!
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| Coconut (Source: Wikipedia) |
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