An interesting discussion with my husband tonight opened my eyes to the ways we see things differently. Recently I have discovered I'm a bit of a hippy. He, on the other hand, calls himself a realist. I like to think of humans as a more evolved species; a group of animals capable of seeing and learning from each others' differences. I love to surround myself with people who are different to me. I don't know why other than I love learning about different cultures, I love being a part of something different; I just am fascinated with the things people do.
He looks at us as animals who are slowly losing our instincts and thus becoming less of a survivalist society. So slowly in fact that we are still more animal and less human when it comes to instincts.
He says I am not normal in my ability to hang out with a lot of different people. He says I am weird wanting to surround myself with people who are different to me. He says if we still needed our instincts to survive I would have been killed years ago.
I see where he's coming from and I understand the logic and facts behind it. But it makes me sad. I'm sad that as evolved of a species as we are we haven't learned to control these "fight" and "survival" instincts. I'm sad that wanting to be around different people and learn from them is so rare. I'm sad when I think of the fact that he's basically right. Look at war - there are groups in the middle east who want to kill us in the west b/c we look different and are incredibly different to them. It's territorial. Isn't that what dogs base everything on? Their territory? By the way, this is my "world view of his ideas".
He looks at this issue through a "local lens". Even in the great USA people are territorial. Our daughter might get hurt simply b/c she is a minority in her current school. At least that's his thoughts. And because I see this happening all over the world, I can't argue this fear with him. I can verbalize my thoughts (see above about wishing we were more evolved) and share that she tends to view the world the way I do - learn from those who are different. Soak in their knowledge, experience, and wisdom! I can hope that she loves to learn from all people and can adapt easily to other cultures. And I very much want to believe that people will get along and instead of avoid people who are different to us we will embrace them and learn from them.
But will that happen? Or will racism continue to exist?
I guess only time will tell...
No comments:
Post a Comment