9: Coaching — A Multicultural Perspective

In many walks of life, we either oversimplify the concept of culture with a limited or categorical view, or we over-emphasize culture, with the result that we create separation and disintegration of human beings. In truth, we are all members of the same species, that being Homo Sapiens, meaning “wise man.” Most of us would say “well, of course” to this apparent fact. That fact, however, has much more significance than we might think.

As Yuval Noah Harari points out in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015), we are the last remaining species of several that existed up to about 100,000 years ago. Even recently in South Africa the discovery of yet another species of homo, Homo naledi was announced. Of the now eight identified species within the genus homo, only Sapiens remains. It is worth looking at this a bit further. A species is a distinctive form of a genus that has evolved over time from a common ancestor.