So I've been forced to think about this all throughout the last two years, and I think I have figured it out.
No, that's a lie that can never be true. I think I have figured it out for myself... I don't think it really applies to anyone else. it might, but it probably doesn't. I have no idea.
I also think I've learned in my endeavor to read Harold Bloom's Canon of Western Literature (yea, I know I havn't told anyone that really... and yes I know it will tak eme a long long time), that I think I side with Socrates on many points, but primarily on the essential wisdom of my total lack of knowledge. In comparison to all the knowledge there is to know, the knowledge I do knwo is negligible, therefore: I know nothing.
Taking that to heart makes most of my opinions great for myself and the time, but also, realistically, open to change.
Anyway, I've been thinking about living in a different country, and trying to accompany people in poverty, and work for social justice, adn witness faith, and live simply, and adapt to the culture, but also to be yourself, and to juggle all of those ocmplicated and hard to define things while also doing it for another 5 or 6 not mentioned other things that are equally as complex. If you feel as comfused as I at the end of redain that sentence then you know what every day feels like in the position we're in.
How do you handle that? How much of yourself do you sacrifice and force into the new cultural mold and where do you draw the line and say, I hold this value, and I have to go against your culture and stand for this, no matter what!? When, where, how do you even begin to make those decisions.
In the end, I always have a panic attack (but not a real one, just in my head) and freeze up because I default to "Who the EFF am i to make those decisions?"
But practically, I still have to go outside every day and decide how to behave.
This becomes especially complicated when you've been told that you should be "an example" with no clear definition of what that means.
So here's my plan of action: maybe its come to late, maybe its come right on time, or maybe, seeing as I hope to spend a lot of my life in the world and not just at home... I have come here to figure this out.
For me, I have come to learn, not to teach. If you go into a different culture with the mentality of changing a place then you will fail, create more injustice, or jus tbe disappointed in some way. Real sustainable development has to come from within not from without. People need to make change for themselves, and they can do that, and figure out how, if they see that they want to.
There's a lot thats really quite terrible about the way we Americans see and relate to the world and other people, as well as a lot that is good. So we have to sacrifice many of the things that make us comfortable to be able to learn from others. We have to throw some of ourself away and take in some of their ways.
It also requires a decent amount fo security in your own deep values though. You cannot completely abandon everything you believe in, because you are never going to go into a perfect culture. The things youcan learn are great, but there are also things that you can teach without thinking about it. You have to question yourself deeply and say, what things do I hold to be true and important and why? and how can I express that simultaneously respecting the parts of the culture that might make me uncomfortable but are not mutually exclusive to my values and which parts to I have to contradict and challenge just byt he way I live?
This challenge cannot come from a place of, "Wow, you guys are so wrong." As long as it comes from a place of, "I have to be true to myself," then others will see it and make up their own mind. They'll ask themselves, "Why does he/she do that?" and either dismiss it or take it in, and if many people like it then some change may eventually happen, but in their own way, not in yours. And, more likely than not, you will never see it.
One example, which many people might disagree with me on, in my time here would be in gender relations. I don't think its wrong for women to wear pants, but the local people do. While this may be a big issue of women's lib in the west, I would rather let that part of me go. Also while I see nothing wrong with male or female exposure of their bodies for purposes of things liek swimming or heat... they do hear and everyone requres more modest and formal dress, which drives me up the wall to no end, but I am uncomfrtable for.
But, here, women and men don't really talk to each other unless they're sleeping together. If I am seen taking a walk or having a long talk with a girl, then I am dating her. This is a tricky balance becasue there is little I can do to stop that rumor from spreading, but I also hold high value in hte non-sexual relationships I have had with a lot of women, and I refuse to let that part go, I refuse to give in and say, ok, I'll agree, men and women should have purely superficial relationships or they should be sleeping together. There is a lot men and women can learn from each other, and I could not spend two years somewhere without sharing in the wisdom of the women here. So I made friends with students who were girls, women in the office, and mothers of people. I don't really get to know single young women, but hey, I'm still friends with women in a slightly more safe way (although, I've dated many an old gal in the rumorville of Majuro)...
I put up with the questions about my sexual promiscuity, with a conversation about how that is not true and I can have friends, to questions about my sexuality when the reality finally hits home and everyone knows I never did sleep with anyone. And I accept and deal with those things calmly though repetatively, because I would rather stick to that part of myself.
Not because I think I need to change the culture (though I think the culture does need to cahnge its not my job to do that, nor do I know how to do it, nor do I know if its the right time, nor do I know what it should necissarily change to) but because I need to be true to myself.
So where does this example crap fit in?
Well, I think it would be really naive of someone to think they can live in a different culture without affecting the peopel around them (hell... to live ANYWHERE without affecting the people around them) but more so in a different culture that looks at you sin either a good or bad way as "an American." So taking into the realization that you are being looked at and evaluated in some ways... then the best thing to do is be true to yourself... know what you are able to sacrifice to learn, respect the parts that you can and cannot adapt to, show interest in different thoughts and ideas, and stick to being true to yourself...
then some things you do won't mesh with the local style, and peopel can make up their won minds about that.
That seems like more words than were necessary to explain what I think is a much more ismple Idea, but I havn't written in a long time, and I felt like waxing rhetorical.
Good night.
