This is my first diary entry at DailyKos, so please be easy on me. As a global traveler, I have had to go to nearly ever corner of this little blue ball. I have had to represent my country and my fellow Americans to numerous other cultures and beliefs, and let me say this -
It hasn't been easy.
That is why, I decided to start writing here at DailyKos. For many years now, I have been reading the NYT columns of Thomas Friedman. I kept telling myself that I could do that. I travel the same amount (if not more) as Tom. Just last week I was interview by the CEO of a major hotel chain, because I stayed in his hotels 80+ times in 2004. I actually turned the interview around and started to interview him!. Hey, I thought, this is easy, so maybe I can give Tom a run for his money (Yeah, Right!)
My goal of writing here at DailyKos is to give everyone a global perspective of what is going on outside the United States and how it may or may not affect them. I will probably offend some people. I hope not to enter into the economic philosophical debates between Welshman and Sterling Newberry. I am no economist, I am just a guy that is on the road 200+ days a year and half of that is overseas.
So here goes, my first DailyKos Diary - Are you an Insular American?
At the end of April, I was returning from a business trip in Boston. As I waited for my flight, I picked up a copy of the Boston Globe. Inside was a Op-Ed piece by Derrick Jackson called the "The Insular American". In his column he interviewed, Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Laureate. Soyinka did not mix words by stating "that for all of our technology, Americans are now among the most insular and least curious people in the world".
This is so true. I have to travel to Paris all the time. It is not uncommon, when I am at JFK waiting on the flight to board to talk to one of numerous American tourist going to Europe for the first time. Most of the time they ask me, "When is a good time to go to the Eiffel Tower?" Why? "Because that is the only thing in Paris to see." I have had their kids ask me to reassure them that there are indeed McDonald's there. Now this is over simplifying the problem, but these observations are only a small part of the issues that I have had to deal with.
Soyinka went on to explain in Jackson's column that -
"It doesn't matter whether it's blacks, it doesn't matter the class, it doesn't matter the level of education," Soyinka says. ''Some of the most brilliant of my colleagues in universities here are so insular that it hurts. I find it very difficult.
''The basis of it is a lack of an integrated exposure to other societies. This is one of the most insular societies I've ever encountered anywhere. And I'm not talking just about ghetto kids. Professors . . . parents . . . legislators. It's across the board. That is something you do not find to that extent in the rest of the world."
Now I can throw in the stories about having to take my co-workers and even a few bosses overseas with me and how they made themselves (and me)look like complete fools. But would it make any difference? Okay, here is one example. I had a boss that once told me to take my co-worker Elena with me to Sao Paulo, Brazil because she spoken perfect Spanish. I don't know if Elena or myself was more embarrassed. Or the time, my co-worker Bob, told our Chinese host in Shanghai that he loved all types of Chinese food except Sushi. I can go on and on.
Soyinka laid blame for this problem where it belonged - at the top.
Soyinka yesterday reaffirmed his sentiments about Bush: ''I believe it is impossible for him not to realize by now, even though he may not admit it, that he has committed a very grave blunder. It seems to me just impossible for somebody in that position, with the kinds of pronouncements he's made, not to realize that he's been living in a fool's paradise he has created.
''The world is far more complex for a nation, however strong, however big, to say that he doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks as long as he's doing what God intends. That kind of language, that kind of belief is what makes any leader, any human being dangerous. . . . Many Americans are in a mental bunker. Any information that tries to penetrate that bunker is rejected as enemy intellectual action."
Americans have developed a belief that there is nothing that they can learn from outside the country. That the opinions of those that are not Americans are not worth listening to. This is something that just can not believe. That Americans can be so.....STUPID! We, Americans have come up with some great ideas over are short history, but why do we not look outside to just self-reflect. I had hoped that 9/11 would have woken us up to the outside world, but it seems to have made us even more insular. Soyinka has attributed this to Bush's you're-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists rhetoric. Today, it seems to be un-American to listen to a non-American for anything. One co-worker is always critical of me, when I bring something up that I watched on BBC - that liberal rag.
I have started to wonder a loud, similar to Soyinka and Friedman, if future Americans will be able to function in globalized world. Not only will kids not be able to see the challenges that this much smaller world will impact them, they will lack the skills that they will need to answer those challenges. Skills like Critical Thinking.
''I would begin by saying geography should become a compulsory subject," he (Soyinka) says. ''If geography is not taught in schools, parents should begin to teach it in the home.
''For me, geography is the summit of human existence. It dictates the culture, it contains the history of how human beings actually recreated existence depending on the environment." In the United States, he continued, ''geography is 'What is the capital of California?' and once they say that, they think they know the world.
''The way we were taught geography, it is what made us so confident in the critical assessment of other nations. We know them, I mean, you don't know them all the way, but we know them in a way that is fundamental to the relationship of humanity to the natural environment.
''Once people understand that, you understand why Eskimos live in igloos, and you don't see that as backwards but as an intelligent use of resources. You understand why certain peoples eat horrible looking grubs and you recognize them as superior to hamburgers. Curiosity precedes critical thinking. If you're not curious, you can't think."
I guess that is why I turned out the way I did. I was a Geography Major at The Ohio State University and then a grad student at Clark University, before going to Columbia to get an MBA in International Operations Management. Many people questioned me. Why Geography? Well it looks like it prepared me. Soyinka put it best - ''History can always be cooked up, written from the winner's point of view. History is 90 percent fiction. Geography is the material reality from which everything else derives."
Last week, I called a good friend in Calgary. We shot the shit. I brought up if he thought Stephen Harper was going to bring a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Then I thought, I bet the average American was completely unaware that the Canadian government was on the brink of collapse. I asked my friend if he would bet me a looney that atleast 5% of Americans knew that. He said that he would lose that bet, he wouldn't even take 1%.
It is sad, but I guess the truth hurts, but this is one that will eventually bite every American in the butt. Sleep tight.