Menu

Proyecto Visión 21

Intellectual and cultural shortsightedness quickly leads to wrong conclusions

Francisco Miraval

I recently met a person from South America who was visiting the United States for the first time (to meet an old friend) and, in fact, this was her first trip outside her native country.  I spoke with her and it was clear that, in her opinion, she had found a new mission for her life: to correct all the wrong things happening in our country.

According to this visitor, in spite of being in the United States for just a few days, she already knew everything was wrong here. Food, television, cars, and churches were wrong. She said that, if the opportunity were given to her, she would quickly change everything using her own country as a model of “good things”.

I am not criticizing this visitor. She is clearly a highly intelligent person and she is very friendly. Yet, being this her first time away from the culture and the society she always knew, and being her first time in the United States it is understandable she thought everything here is wrong. (Of course, we had many things to improve in this country, but that’s not what she was saying.)

Also, I can’t criticize her because, several decades ago, I did the same thing when I left South America for a short time to visit the United States for the first time. Once here, I thought everything here was wrong. Not just different, but totally wrong.

I thought, for example, that it made no sense to order pizza for delivery instead of going out to eat. And I was sure it was absolutely wrong for churches to have parking lots and to use envelopes to collect the offering. (Obviously, both at that time and at all times since then I question many things that people acritically accepts as “normal”.)

During my first visit to the United States I could have said “I am experiencing a different culture and society”. Instead, I said, “Everything here is wrongs and it needs to be corrected,” In fact, similar thoughts were expressed by the South American visitor visiting our country for the first time. (I am sure she would say that say things in China or any other country.)

Now, that negative attitude based in not understanding something and, therefore, assuming that something is “wrong” is the same attitude I frequently find in people when I talk about the emerging future, a future that is not continuity of the past. The attitude makes sense, but it is dangerous.

If the cultural shock between two current realities is to shocking that leads to deny the less know reality as “wrong”, then the cultural, emotional, and existential shock between the present and the future will be even deeper, creating a denial of the future and rejecting any dialogue about that future.

In addition, that is a dangerous attitude because it leads to self-exclusion of the future and because it greatly reduces any opportunity about a critical approach to the present and to the future.

Go Back

Comment

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.