I am not sure which countries you've all had a chance to visit, but I try to make my way to as many foreign countries to experience the culture and people as I can. I try to keep mental notes on how the people act and interact with each other.
On a recent trip to the Bahamas (unfortunately, it wasn't for work), I made it a point to try to interact with the locales and understand how the interact with someone from another country. I suppose coming from the U.S. I am not accustomed to friendly strangers so any act of kindness or gratitude is always noticed and appreciated.
What do you all think of this? Do you think we as Americans have become a society of individuals not concerned at all in how we interact with others? Is technology to blame for our woes or are manners and civility going the way of the dodo?
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I also enjoy visiting other countries and try to learn about their culture and how they live. It is interesting to see how people elsewhere live. I went to the Bahamas for work and ended up having to stay for a little over a month. I truly enjoyed my stay there. I was able to get out of the tourist area and see how the people really are and how they live. It was an enlightening experience. The people I dealt with went out of their way to make me feel welcome.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we purposefully have become a society that is not concerned with interaction with others. There is just so much that needs to get done in this rapid paced society that we no longer take the time to stop and interact with people. We look for simpler ways to do things and save time, and have turned to use of technology to communicate faster and more effectively. This is part is good because we can get more things done, but it has made us be impersonal. After too much use of technology you forget how important it is to relate on a one-on-one basis with others and build that relationship. We are so busy doing things we don't take the time to stop and enjoy being with other people. Many times I find myself in this category.
You discuss an interesting topic. A few month ago I watched a 2006 documentary called "God Grew Tired Of Us" about Sudanese refugees trying to build a new life in America. Along with experiencing running water and electricity for the first time, they were very surprised at the isolated -- and what saw as lonely -- lives we Americans live. They described how in their culture, if someone was lost or needed help he just knocked on anyone's door and that person would assist him in any way they could. In America, that nearly got the refugees into a lot of trouble with the police, since Americans are very suspicious of strangers knocking on their doors.
ReplyDeleteI also just read an article on MSNBC (read it here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37399539/ns/health-behavior/) about how the current college-age generation scored 40% lower on a test of empathy than their counterparts a generation ago. One of the several reasons the researchers proposed was due to social media. It is easy to have "friends" online - and just as easy to tune them out when you don't feel like dealing with them. The researchers feel that this carries over into the real world.