As I grow older and somewhat wiser, my views of the world change. I have started to look at the bigger picture differently. It is not due to any one source, but rather a slew of outside influences and the shrinking of the world due to globalization. Globalization I feel has had the greatest impact. It has brought the far corners of the world to my finger tips and allowed me to learn about different cultures through different avenues without even leaving my home. It allows the unbiased information from across the world to travel almost instantaneously to my lap top. This allows me to sort through what I feel is bull shit propaganda versus what may actually contain some grains of truth. Everything is biased to a degree, but that is not a topic for here nor there right now. The information we have at our fingertips is not meant to be wholly absorbed as is, but rather to be processed and verified using whatever tools we have available to us. One tool we have that brings the world closer is the news. As I mentioned above, everything is biased to a degree, and while the news is supposed to take a neutral stance, there are many times when it does not. Yet, what other tool do we have that can bring such a vast array of information instantaneously from around the world? None. So, as I normally do every morning, I read the New York Times and peruse their different columns. Currently reading the paper online, I have access to the videos that are produced either via the paper or their correspondents. A while ago, I stumbled across a series that is still on going, called "Our Man in Tehran". This series is about a news correspondent, Thomas Erdbrink, who delves into the lives of everyday Iranians and the issues they face. Some of the topics addressed so far are those of radicals, the death penalty, marriage, and drought. In each segment, a small picture is painted of life in Iran. The only time it deals with the government or people in power is when they are talking about radicals and the effect the government has on those radicals. When you start to look at the world through the lens of everyday life, things start to look very similar to everywhere else, albeit with a different cultural twist. People have similar struggles regardless of where they live. Everyone has to put food on their table. Everyone has to deal with family members. Everyone has a government that they either like or dislike. The human condition varies from country to country, but if you start to identify with people as people and not "Iranians" or "Americans" or "pick a country", then it is easier to start seeing that their lives matter just as much as ours do. Just because our government casts a country in a demonic light doesn't mean that every person living there is demonic. Rather, the people living there probably have more in common with us than we would ever think, if we only took the time to look at their lives. "Our Man in Tehran" does just that. It takes everyday life in Iran and makes it accessible to the rest of the world. Writing this now, I wonder if any other countries would watch a series on the United States and the people living here; their struggles and how they live. Perhaps it would be useful for Iranians to see that we in the United States, while half a world away, deal with similar struggles.
The accessibility we have to other countries today, even if they may be our governments' ardent enemies, is astounding and can do more to pull down barriers than anything prior. The more we see how similar we are to those around the world, the more we realize that it is government propaganda that we must fear the most. It is our governments and their power play for the upper hand that ultimately casts a shadow on certain parts of the world. Scarier still, it is the people who buy in to that propaganda who ultimately create the larger problem. The people who refuse to look past our governments' picture are the ones who perpetuate feelings of hatred towards other countries and who become the unwitting foundation of our governments' actions. If our governments did not have people to support their actions, those actions (in the form of sanctions and wars) would fail. It is the people who follow our governments blindly, without questioning them, who take away the humanity of people living elsewhere. If we react solely to a government, an entity, we are relinquishing any possibility of seeing the people behind that government. If we peel back the layers, we start to see the same human emotions that are universally shared; love, hate, fear, hope, etc. Those are basic emotions that we all possess. The more we can pull back the veil of government and see the people behind, the more we can relate to them and begin to pull down the barriers constructed decades ago. As FDR stated years ago, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself". If we are afraid of a different culture for whatever reason, we immediately begin to construct barriers, and those barriers stoke the unwarranted fear. Most times, there is nothing to be afraid of. Most times, fear comes from a lack of understanding. That fear is played upon by governments to control a people and perpetuate their reasoning for their actions. We must begin to look past our fears and see the other side and seek to understand. Now, with all my writing against governments, I am not saying that governments are not useful. We need a government to keep order and to run a country, but in most cases, government goes too far. If more people began to look at the broader picture and the humanity contained within that broader picture, our governments would have less traction and might actually re-align themselves with the will of the people. I know, lofty ideals and hopes for our governments, yet it has to start somewhere. All we need is to relate on a human level, forgo religious denominations, political alignments, racial prejudices, and simply see others for what they are. For we all are "human, all too human."
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