I've traveled a lot in the past few weeks. I went to Barcelona for six days to visit my friend Maria, I went to Paris with my study abroad group and some friends we made in the residence for the new year, and this weekend I visited my old French teacher in Rennes (who is teaching English at the university there now and has her own travel blog that you can read here). I realize that I haven't really talked about these travels much, or at all rather.
I'm going to keep my word and avoid the "I went here and did this" syndrome that so easy to fall into. If you want to see what my experiences were like you can look at the pictures on my facebook page.
As I've traveled about and seen how others live, I'm reminded of the impact that place has on a person's identity. Especially in France, where people really don't move around that much from where they were born, I'm reminded of the importance of small scale perspectives in peoples' lives. I can talk and muse and rant about abstract, large-scale speculations on the future of humanity, about the dissolution of national identity, about the integration of political and economic policy, and the proliferation of a common yet pluralistic culture,but it's easy to forget how much of many people's personalities and outlooks are dictated by where they are from.
My first though when I see this is that perhaps my ideas about the nature of humanity were premature, if not out right false.
Then after I think about it more, I realize that instead I've simply overlooked a part of the equation that was always there but hiding behind the largesse and detachment of rational observation. I've ignored the more intimate parts of human life, the parts that are truly defining for many people. I've ignored the power that setting has in creation. Take a newborn and put in one place to live for the rest of his life, he will turn out differently from the person he would become had you placed him in a different place.
Even now, my mind retreats to statistical data about human development. Identical twins who are separated at birth and raised in different families are likely to develop the same sorts of mannerisms and personalities as their counterparts, even when they assimilate the values, customs, and languages of their adopted families.
Even now, I must yank my mind from the perspective that sees human experience as a set of moving probabilities and quantitative data. Even when these things reflect sweeping truths, understanding an individual person or even a given group of people is much deeper and more difficult. For me, however, it's in many ways more interesting.
In this way, I'm very pleased with my travels, even if specific experiences may not have been particularly pleasant. I've seen how other people are like, and I've seen different outlooks and opinions that sometimes in conflict with mine, but that are so ingrained into a cultures' collective psyche that I'm hesitant to make a value judgement on them. After all, who knows how they might of felt had they been born elsewhere.
I was once very much attracted to the idea that everyone really is the same, and that cultural differences are superficial at best. I now find this idea to be too simple. Yet, I find the idea that a person from one culture could never understand a person from a different culture because they are so radically different to be equally oversimplified.
Instead, I'm finding that while cultural things may dictate how a person acts or even sees the world, it's easy to understand someone when you learn their honest motivations. In this way, even if identification with a person from a different place is impossible, empathy most certainly is not.
Here, I feel like I'm meandering back into the detached, rational side of myself, which is not what I want. I feel like a balding, tweed-wearing academic in an armchair reflecting on the world in his office without actually being part of it.
Yet, I know that I probably would not have come to these conclusions had I decided not to study abroad or at least travel around and see things. I suppose there's always interesting people to meet and interesting things to see if you take the time to get lost.
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