A really good friend of mine sent me a poem this morning called Travel, written by a poet named Geo Evan, translated from Italian. She sent me this because she knows I love travel (and have done quite a lot of it) and she was sure I would like what the poet was saying about travel, and she was right--I liked it, and it also got me to thinking.
One of the benefits of travel according to the poet was that if you did not travel, then you might become racist. I especially liked how he wrote it, that you might become racist, instead of the current short-sightenedness in the United States that all white people are born racist and there is no way to change that. I say it is obvious that everybody everywhere in the world undergoes various experiences, events, joys, fears, frustrations, obstacles, triumphs, and let-downs, and due to all matters of varying impacts will lead to making decisions of how they will feel about aspects of the world and its people. The point is that the exposure to other kinds of people than one's own can generate an expanded appreciation of others without negative judgments that are self limiting.
In my response to my friend, I decided to expand the concept to an area that interests both of us, not specifically included in the poet's meaning. There has been quite a LOT of discussions recently about visiting people coming here from other planets and I wondered if the concept of racism would make "aliens" very loath to show themselves to us in the immense likehood that they will look quite different from us and that on its face would likely wreck any chance of forming an alliance with them. A possible human response could be to kill on sight.
I realize that I am guilty of potential racism of that myself, in that I have said "If some UFO people come down among us, I want them to look much like us, not some frightening monsters." And believe me they certainly COULD be very frighting monsters in appearance.
In that brilliant book, Life In Darwin's Universe by Gene Bylinsky, a book I read long ago and want to read it again, said that in the Universe there are two ideal body types for advanced, intelligent, technological (tool making) people, and those are the two-legged, upright, eyes in front model (like us), OR a "rotary" model with many arms all around, like a squid or octobus. Yeah, I could "get" that, but I really didn't want to be in the presence of a human sized squid stepping out of their space craft, I would risk having a heart attack.
Now I have a more "accepting" view due to having read another amazing book, about how wonderful octobuses are, The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Mongomery. I have soften my view. Of course, that is also an ocean going type of body, not terrestrial, so we're less apt to deal with that kind of people...although in the book The Time Machine, the hero in the book at the end of the book set the time machine to the farthest future where he observed the sun dim out and the end of the Earth, the last creature alive on the planet looked like a large octopus that was terrestrial. So even H.G. Wells allowed for that body type to be the most long-lasting one.
All of which is to say that it would behoove us to be kind and accepting of any physical appearances, and wouldn't we all want the same?
Here's a kind of a funny occurence that happened to me some time ago. You know how sometime your brain just goes out on a journey to who knows where and you lose all connection to the here and now? (Or am I the only one?) Well, one day I was driving my car on a very empty rural road (driving "automatically") and suddenly I saw an utterly horrendous and frighten creature standing there in a field. The sight of this thing chilled me to the bone, what was this horrible monster? Well, fortuantaly I "came back to my normal consciousness" and saw, oh, it is just a Cow! I don't know why I had that experience, but I never forgot it...I saw how from a slightly different perspective that a sweet and common of a creature as a cow can be very frightening in appearance if you have never seen one before.
Think of all the varities of animals just here on this one planet. Probably any of them would near scare us to death if we had not encountered them before. Rhinoceroses, Elephants, Giraffes, Hyenas, Vultures, Buffalo, Horses, Alligators. The whole deal has to do with familiarity. Once we have experience with them, we come to appreciate and even love them. (Well, maybe not the alligators.) And the same goes with people.
Speaking of people, my genes include Neandertal genes and another unusual one, Denisovan. That is not very common. Both of those are now extinct. I am sure we don't really know exactly what those two types of people looked like, pretty similar to humans now, but still, different enough to wonder how and why those different types of human breed together, but they certainly did. And regarding the Native Americans (from my point of view as a white person), I think the average person thinks that most of the American Indians (so many different tribes) are gone due to "whites people" killing them all. No, according to some studies, they disappeared into "us" (and "we" into them) via marriage and giving birth to mixed children. I am not arguing FOR or AGAINST "mixed" marriage, only saying that it definitely existed throughout history and currently, and this is a demonstration of how familiarity can prevent racism, as the poem says, since falling in love and getting married and having children is exactly demonstative of NOT being racist.
I felt so happy a couple of weeks ago shopping at a new gorcery store I discovered, "Q" Market that is a Pesian market...that there is a whole substantial culture of Persians here in Los Angeles. I felt that it added to the over-all strength of our city if having communities like that were viewed as allies instead of enemies (our federal government views Persians living in Iran as our enemy). I realize that things like that can easily go either way, but my current view is that if people from Iran chose to move HERE, they must have something very much in common with us, and that is wanting freedom and opportunity. I know that many freedom seekers from other countries end up ruining freedom for us by voting the only way they knew back home, but still, we can hope that ultimately they will come to understand and appreciate what is really freedom.
I understand that there is something like 2,200 different languages being spoken in Los Angeles! I couldn't list that many language names, let alone know where they all come from! But it is fascianting to contemplate. There could be a ton of growth and personal expansion combined within that many different cultures, or else it would lead to the worst example of the Tower of Babel and we all would end up killing each other instead of learning from each other. It could go either way. But at least from the point of view of this poet, there is a good chance of becomming enhanced.
There is a lot more that I can say based on that poem, but I will just add one more that is down to earth. I had an uncle who had condos in three places, California, Sweden, and Finland, and business affairs in Denmark, Switzerland, and France. I was the executor of his state, so when he died, I moved to Sweden to administer his affairs in Stockholm and Helsini. I was living in Sweden for severeal months (and several trips) without knowing a word of Swedish (HE never learned it!). Almost every Swede past middle school can speak English fluently, which was a great advantage for me working there.
While not having to know Swedish made it easier for me to do the work there, this also made it so I had no pressure to learn some of the language. This put me "outside" of understanding the Swedish language, and not having a positive view of it. It looked ugly in print and of course, was meaningless noise when spoken.
However, one lucky day I was riding the tunnelba (the Swedish subway) from downtown Stockholm to the area where my uncle's condo building was, and I saw an advertisement posted on the wall in front of the carriage I was in. I was an ad for a woman's bath product and showed a beautiful woman in a bathtub, holding up a lily flower. I saw the world "lilje" on the advertisement and coubled that with the picture of the flower made me think that "lilje" meant "lily". I pulled out my Swedish/English dictionary and saw that "lilje" meant "lily of the flower" ("lila" mean "lily"). Suddenly, the language wasn't so ugly, now!
I got off the subway at my stop and marveled that the name of that subway stop was "Liljeholmen". So there was that lily again, what must "holmen" mean? The dictionary said "harbors", so the name of my subway stop was "Lily Harbors"...another beatiful name, and this stop was right along a series of harbors!
So now that I knew that "holmen" meant "harbors", so the whole name of the city, "Stockholm", must have something to do with harbors. Well, "holmen" is hardors and "holm" is one harbor, and looking up "stock" revealed that stock is Swedish for "lumber". Ah ha, the name of the city is Lumber Harbor, so clearly that was that city's first claim to fame, and, in fact, logging and boat making was a major industry and so trees would be cut down from the northern forests and floated down the waterways by the hundreds and gathering up in Stockholm for building things.
As I walked up the hill from the harbor to my Uncle's condo, I looked at the street name, yet another formerly ugly looking name: "Grenljusbacken". My handy dictionary helped me deciper that name. "Gren" is a light, like a lit candle. Grenljus is a partiucular lighted candle, the Christmas lights that the Swedes put in every window during the Christmas season. And "backen" means "up a hill". So my Uncle's street name was "Christmas lights in a window going up hill". And only a few days later I had gone down to Stockholm for some errands, and by the time I was coming back home, I was walking up hill after dark, and I saw first hand all the Christmas lights glistening in the windows as I walked up hill: Granljusbacken!
From then on, Swedish was one of the most beautiful languages ever. I frequently had my nose in my Swedish/English translater book, what does this mean, what is this place really called, making the whole place a wonder. I really recommend this exercise to anyone who is going to any non-English speaking place...the treat you will enjoy will be that much deeper. And becaue of that, you will start to think and understand how they see things, and you will love them for the beautiful people they really are.
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