I will admit, my perspective of other cultures and countries is largely informed through social media, especially the news. For example, when the plane crashes of September 11 took place, the media portrayed muslims as these horrible people wanting to do horrible things and people we should fear in society. Unfortunately, I fed into this for a while until I considered that all cultures and people have selected people who identify with their culture, society, country, etc. that choose to take part in these evil deeds. Another example of this is how the media portrays immigration and focuses on how it negatively impacts our economy, without acknowledging the immigrants’ perspective of fleeing their home countries solely to survive.
I am not necessarily a reader, however I do like to read romantic or mystery novels on my own time. Therefore, the book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, very heavily formed, in fact it made a perception on Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan for me, as I have never read about them, the country, or see much on social media. This is yet another way of how one person’s experiences from a specific culture or country can inform our perspective about all people of that culture or country, regardless of if it's the truth or not.
The ways in which we experience people, ideas, issues, cultures, and so on, can be greatly impacted by how we learn of these same things. For example, if all your life you’d read and/or heard one thing about a culture, that is, whether you choose to or not, embedded into your thought process and may actually put a barrier up against learning, or acquiring, any new knowledge that goes against this previously conceived idea or belief regarding that culture.
Brenna,
ReplyDeleteYou are so right! I really like how you brought up A Thousand Splendid Suns, because I had the same experience with this book. I kind of took on the typical post-9/11 view of Afghanistan originally, just by growing up while they were searching for Bin Laden and the war on terrorism. This book showed me that there are victims in Afghanistan too. The terrorist group was behind those horrible acts, not the entire population of these Middle Eastern countries. I had first learned of 9/11 in school, and misunderstood this part. This shows how the way you learn about events impacts how you feel about those events.
I realized there were victims in Afghanistan too! Very sad. The terrorists were not only terrorizing other countries, but their own "people"as well, unfortunately.
DeleteThis is generally true when discussing war-torn countries. There is no way to fight a war in the country of the people without devasting and unilaterally imprisoning the same population, the government or revolutionaries, are trying to "save". That is why history is written by the victors, they can work to hide the ugly behind purpose and righteousness.
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