Differences and Similarities

I've noticed that by human nature, people always point out differences between things and not the similarities, especially between cultures, belief systems, and way of life. I have noticed this through travelling. Every time I go somewhere, although I am amazed and delighted at the differences and what different groups consider normal, I am also amazed at the similarities. No matter where I go, when I talk to the people and learn about their culture and way of life, I am amazed at how similar everyone is. Since people only mention differences, it is difficult to put in perspective how similar all cultures are to each other. Of course, this is to be expected, as similarities are just boring to talk about, in a way. Perhaps this is what is causing huge gaps in people understanding each other across cultures... more often than not, a current culture will consider someone from another culture an "outsider" who is vastly different than themselves. Many movies and other forms of entertainment centre around one character realising how similar a character from a different population group is. Perhaps all of this is just a misunderstanding due to human nature in which we mention only what is different and not what is similar. After all, how boring would it be if someone, who had just come back from a trip, spent hours describing how everything was similar to home before describing what was different? This is how the human mind works, it classified generalisations and then describes each sub-category by how it differs from the super-category, and the human mind can then differentiate between two sub-groups through its differences. Well, perhaps it would be a good idea in the future, that before talking about differences between cultures or places, or anything for that matter, to first mention the degree by which two items differ. That would help put everything into perspective.

Although I am constantly surprised by how similar different places are after visiting somewhere new, my best eye-opening experience would have to be my backpacking trip across the Mediterranean. Starting in southern Morocco, I followed the northern coast of the Mediterranean through to Spain, France, Italy, Greece, then Turkey, and finally up to Bulgaria and Romania. I was amazed. From the media, I had originally pictured vast differences between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Although the expected difference were present, the similarities vastly outweighed the differences. Instead of a clearly delineated Christian vs. Islamic world, I found a slow progression of change, blending aspects of both worlds everywhere I went. I started to get amazed at why there were so many religious wars in the past, and if there were religious wars, perhaps these were just wars between rulers with different beliefs rather than wars between populations with different ideologies and views on life.

Well, something to think about anyway. Once again, I believe that the world would be a better place if people spent more time learning about each other rather than just relying on negative knee-jerk reactions. Perhaps one way to aid this process is to be aware of the human nature of highlighting differences rather than similarities. Keeping this in mind, perhaps one could learn to see the world differently, even with the same information input.