Random Thoughts: Some thoughts on culture

This post is more of a "Free typing" so there might not be much coherence between paragraphs :-)

A quote that I came across long ago comes to my mind. It said "Life is a great book of which he who does not travel reads but a page." The import of that quote was not felt at that time. But now, I do see the depth that it carries. Swami Vivekananda pin points the decay that our Civilization experienced during a greater part of the middle ages (ie upto the 15th Century) to the lack of contact with the external world. We became "frogs in the well." No doubt we had developed grand ideas of the human nature and the world beyond the senses. But for ideas to flourish and to become practicable, they need to be exchanged and they need to be continuously re-looked at from time to time to verify their relevance to the current place and time. And we failed there miserably. We invented hideous superstitions, with our misplaced sense of superiority, like the ones to prevent people from crossing the sea and thus bean stagnating.....

Well, I am able to feel this even better, now that I am opening my eyes to a new culture myself.... It is too early to pass statements as to the influence that it will have on me. But one thing that I am happy about is that I am able to appreciate this new culture without giving up the values and traditions that I have imbibed from my culture back home.....

It is very easy to get very sentimental about our native culture when exposed to a foreign one and very easy to say that we "Miss it" and to pass off statements of ours being a "Better culture." But those I feel, if I am to say now, are extremely superficial, as my understanding of both my own and the foreign culture, is very limited .... Each culture is born out of an attitude that a certain set of people embrace towards life... We chose ours a long time ago and that was "To explore and to delve into the truths beyond the senses." And the result is what we have today... And the west chose to delve into, beginning with, the unravelment of the secrets of the "Tangible Nature around" and the result is what we have as the advancement of Science and Technology...


I have been thinking about the superiority of one over another, for the past many days, and to be frank, I have no answer.... I see that the world around, its evolution, is more deeper than what appears to the normal eye that it would be wrong to "give it one particular meaning" and confine it to the realms to either "Good" or "Bad." And also this thought process has brought me to a situation where I am currently finding it difficult to conclusively put things under the "Good"and "Bad" category!!! And this I feel is a fortunate thing to happen because instead of shutting out the so called bad things and denying their right to exist , it gives you an opportunity to analyze them and to try and find as to why they have a place in society.... Finally, I think this is where, ie in our ability to appreciate diverse cultures and to imbibe the good from them, the tradition we belong to and the people who have moulded us into what we are gets reflected.......



Cheers,
Ankethan

PS: Btw, I am currently in South Korea. Will follow up with more posts in the days to come about my experiences here :-)