Image credit: Global Studies
“As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.” – Seneca
Culture is a framework in which we communicate. It enables us to express ourselves and facilitates the widening of the mind and spirit. It’s the soul’s language.
One of the best ways to challenge our ignorance and stereotypes is to continuously find ways to taste new cultures!
Choose a few of these suggestions : complete them within seven days and you’ll be all the more wiser than someone who never dared to try something new.
- Get an acquaintance of yours who is from a different culture to let you interview them. Find out about their culture and some of the struggles their families faced adapting to life as an immigrant in a new country.
- Go to www.youtube.com and locate a music video that’s outside your normal genre and in a different language. Watch it because it may turn out to be a new discovery for you.
- If you live in a building where you are constantly being served by a migrant worker or if you have a domestic worker in your house then spend 20 minutes and interview them. Make a blog post about it or keep it in your journal. Find out about their lives, pains, fears and hopes and then share it.
- Next time you’re surfing the Internet looking for porn – just kidding. Seriously, next time you’re on the net do a google search for bloggers in another country. Give it a read. You may find some interesting truths to all the lies spread in mainstream media and some long held myths might also be broken.
- Set aside a time to go out to for lunch or dinner either by yourself or with friends within seven days. The catch is: Choose a restaurant that comes from a culture that you absolutely have no clue about. Explore the menu and after making your choice ask the waiter to give you a brief history of the dish.
- For all you Twitter addicts, go to Twitter’s search option and type a hashtag for a new country or continent + art. Explore some new artists from different countries, the mediums they use and the inspiration behind their work. If you’re even more ambitious follow them for the next 7 days. You might make a new acquaintance if you’re an artists and gain new ideas at the same time.
- Ask a friend to lend you a book – something they enjoyed and comes from a an author outside of your own. Commit to read at least half of it within the next 7 days and finish it within two weeks.
- Spend some time sitting in silence, most preferably outside and in nature like under a tree, listen to the earth’s wisdom while doing so connect with the idea that all of our culture’s are rooted in the earth. This means that we all have a commonplace.
- In the spirit of the New Year and given that some many cultures celebrate this momentous cycle on different days and in various ways. Research upcoming New Years in 2012 and celebrate. If you have friends from other cultures then take part in their festivities. On a side note, everyday is a New Year.
- Finally, this one is the most important! Keep reading Taste Culture
Now, after trying a few of the suggestions above the next step is to let go of everything you learned. This ensures that you don’t get to cocky or full of it and also opens your mind to be able to keep learning like when you have a conversation with your toilet after over indulging on big ass meal.
Drop us a line and let us know how you fair. Remember, only a few of these ten suggestions are needed in order to give you all the ammo you need to start mingling outside of your ego.
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