Has it only been a week back? The culture shock was there but wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I am still shaking my head at the size of things here though. Everything is on such a large scale.
It starts with the sky. We’re in Big Sky Country for sure. The land is flat and the view off the deck is over seeminging endless fields not so much as interrupted by a fence. Prairie land. The Rockies would be visible off to the West if they weren’t shrouded in cloud. The sky is a morass of constantly amazing cloud formations, making for some excellent sunsets that seem impossible to photograph.
Lots of land means houses are big. Huge even. Much like the vehicles which are truly staggering. There are so many ridiculously sized pickups, SUV’s, 5th wheels (Massive Caravan/Trailers that attach to the rear deck of the pickups) and RV’s (mind bogglingly sized motor homes that in any other country would be an oversized bus). No wonder North America needs to secure the worlds oil supplies.
No one seems to bat an eye. I guess it is so common place. To be fair the large pickups and SUV’s must be useful when the land is inundated with a few feet of snow and we are in the heart of farming and oil country, but still…
Supersize me seems to apply to the food packages and the supermarkets list cheap prices for two or more of every item. No wonder obesity and adult onset diabetes are so common. Living off the fat of the land I guess.
In other news I met my first fundamentalist redneck. Nice enough guy and very intelligent, but also a bigot. Narrow minded and full of dislike (if not hate) currently targeted at Muslims. Gee what a surprise. But he isn’t a racist, as he “has Philipinos working for him, and even has some Orientals for friends”. Fundamentalists are the same everywhere. Blinded by their truth – that we are all different.
I don’t know how people are going to wake up to the fact that we are all the same. All these imagined differences are just that, imagined, constructs of the mind, creations of the ego. It begins at such an early age, the building up of an identity. National anthems at schools, sporting events with us against them, the media playing on fears that everyone is out to get us. It should be no surprise to me but it is each and every day. The worlds population is unconscious, delusional and mentally unwell.
What a fucking waste.
Cultures are different. People do have different identities. That’s what makes the world so interesting. On its own this isn’t at all a bad thing – certainly better that one shared or common identity – how bland would that be (or perhaps is that becoming with the growing global westernisation). The problem, as you say, is that somewhere along the line “different” is misconstrued to mean “better”. I’m not sure what it is in the human psyche that needs to say that because I’m this, I’m sure as hell not that. It does indeed seem a fucking waste. I wouldn’t consider a blueberry pie better than a bag of kumara chips. They’re just different.
Cultures are different but the people really aren’t. People generally associate with the culture they are in usually while totally ignoring the fact that when it comes down to it we are all the same. The culture is just a collection of shared beliefs, which individuals take on board as ‘them’.
The common identity that underlies these beliefs, the immortal spirit, soul, beyond mind, god form or whatever it is called is universal and the true us. All the rest of it, this culture, shared identity etc is just learned. We are taught that these differences are what make us who we and what are.
People forget that they can choose to disregard everything they have been programmed with and step outside the boundaries of their culture to become conscious.
I don’t think this necessarily means becomming bland ’same same’ mono-cultures, it just means that the choice to be who you are is that, a choice rather than the inherited mindset of being so very different to the other people we ’share’ the planet with that it becomes ‘us/me’ against ‘them’.
Am I making sense? A lot of this is the first time I have tried to organise my thoughts along these lines and it is hard to get these ideas across in a sensible fashion eh?
This all makes sense. In principle I’m of the same view. Wouldn’t it be nice if mere tolerance of other (people, ideas, cultures) was replaced by embrace. The difficult bit is moving the predominant world view. Not an impossible task, but not an easy one. I don’t think it is that “people _forget_ that they can disregard everything they have been programmed with”. It is more that they have _never known_ that these forces are working upon them, or equally that even if they are given a glimpse of other possibilities, of choice, they just don’t see the attraction. It is not everyone that wants to “step outside the boundaries of their culture”. It is familiar, it is a security blanket. Making a change seems too much like giving up all sense of belonging. It is much “easier” to operate within the default construct.
You have to first see the big picture, awaken, understand and truly believe that this new way of thinking, of being, is worthwhile for yourself and for the world as a whole. Fostering this releasation in people is probably the greatest challenge facing the world today. Everything else stems from this.