Learning about the world hands on is something that’s always seemed like common sense to me. It’s nice to have all the media in the world to consume for free, but aren’t people themselves just as interesting? And isn’t conversation more interesting then just listening to someone talk or watching movie after movie with the same plot?
The internet is such an incredible invention, it goes without saying and it breaks my heart that everyone thinks of social media as having more net negative than positive.
There are certainly problems with social media companies themselves and the algorithms are cringeworthy, but you still have the whole world at your fingertips. You can literally see into any part of the world and into the lives of such an incredibly diverse set of people.
I talk about culture a lot.
Sometimes I feel like my constant insistence on cultural exchange can come across as cheesy or overly enthusiastic. I worry that a sudden desire to understand a foreign culture may be misunderstood as a desire to explore “the exotic”,”the other”. I know people like that, I mean, I live in Japan, probably the culture most targeted by strange fetishes from people abroad (sure there are sexual fetishes but also cultural fetishes). There are plenty of people in Asia who fetishize US values or Hollywood too.
There is also the well meaning and unwilling colonizer who wants to “save the world” with western education and western medicine, or religion. They envision themselves as saving others and this can be a massive ego trip. While I don’t think these people should be demonized because they mean well and I’m some situation actually help through their volunteering and raising awareness, these people also need a kind of wake up call.
I’m not fueled by either of these. I’m fueled by two things. The first is my curiosity, which I do not believe I should be ashamed of. The second is possibilities. What would this world look like if the 6 populated continents of the world could share ideas and perspective with respect and care for each other, without any having dominance over one another?
Of course if we attempt to do this through governments or corporations, it won’t be 3 minutes before the power games start. Old habits die hard, and these institutions weren’t built for that kind of thing. They were built to manage power, not to share it.
So it’s easy to think that such a thing is not possible, but if we can connect with others who are driven by curiosity, and awaken the curiosity of others around us, this is no longer an impossible dream, but an inevitability.
Curiosity with respect leads to positive developments. There is always a bit of this out there in the world, but I feel it’s not something that we’ve learned from our parents or schools or pop cultures and so it only affects those who happen to come across the right stimuli to arouse it, so it is still very rare.
Many of us are so disempowered that we think we need a news organization to tell us what is happening, even when the news occurs at our own doorsteps and we can to investigate for ourselves.
This is not a post to complain about institution, there is plenty of that, we can do that too if we want, but let’s try our best to be led by curiosity because that is always an exciting path to choose, so long as you are careful to smell danger when it arises.
This is why Hive is so much more valuable to me than traditional social media. The community and reward system here has de-incentivized behavior that is dishonest and it’s still small enough to manage so we don’t have nearly as many scammers here as traditional social media.
At the same time, there are soooo many people out there on Twitter and Facebook, I wish we could create trends there that were are starting to normalize at hive, where we take an greater interest in each other.
For me, this has always been normal. I heard that Japan has the biggest music industry in the world (this was 15 years ago) and so I started to explore Japan through its media but later through friendships. I met a few great Indonesians in Tokyo plus a great friend at Hive and so I spent a month learning more about the language and culture. I find a ton of good people from Nigeria and Venezuela at Hive and so I make an extra effort to learn more.
I ask questions. If it’s ever too much, let me know, but I think you should too! There is far more that you can learn about the world from conversation with each other than through a university course. That’s exactly why I started cross culture.
Truth be told, I’m not all that interested in cultural traditions. I’m interested in how you see the world, what causes you to see it that way and how we can expand each other’s perspective and have fun doing it.
If this is the kind of thing that interests you, feel free to get in touch. If you have any questions about how to deal with uncomfortable topics, how to start conversations with people from other cultures, how to avoid troublesome people, how to avoid arguments, feel free to ask. I don’t know everything but I’ll try to help.
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Come join us in Hive Cross Culture where we talk and share ideas about Culture, language and travel and share any bilingual content. Join our discord
We also have a @crossculture account curating bilingual posts and running contests to support local communities. If you like what we do, please consider delegating to @crossculture or follow our trail 🙂
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