In my glass: water
From my iPod: Rhythm of Love, by Plain White T's (from my Grooveshark "Happy" playlist)
From my bookshelf: Nothing. Since its Freshers, I thought it best not to start on any big books with third year looming large over me.
Outside: cool, but sunny
My mood: cheerful
Today's hairstyle: Celtic knot on wet hair
Afternoon all.
So back over on the LHC, we have a thread in the members-only Friendship Board titled "Rude Questions You've Always Wanted to ask...". Basically over there, we talk about topics which we would otherwise be hard-pressed to be able to talk about in normal society. We have a kind of unspoken agreement not to let an argument go too far, and that rude questions by definition usually elicit rude answers. But as odd as it may sound to have a thread in such a friendly forum especially dedicated to things seen as rude orto which people might take offence to, it has actually become a very valuable thread for some of us.
When I first entered the thread in early June (we were already around 2000 posts in on various issues, and the thread is still going strong with at least daily posts since) the current discussion was on the issue of illegal immigrants, and the racism felt by legal immigrants who are sometimes assumed by the community to be illegal. A difficult discussion to have in public, due to the hefty accusations or offence that could be taken by much of the community. Part of what was discussed was that racism was seen in some parts of the world, and by some people to be an inherent part of the illegal immigrant issues (for example, it would be common in their area to hear phrases like "go back to where you came from") and that made it difficult in trying to discuss the semantics of legal and illegal immigration. For example, some of us, me included, don't associate colour or race with illegal immigrants, probably because I grew up in an area where there were a fair number of completely legal immigrants from all sorts of places and all sorts of races, and that continues to be the case up here at University. The thing was that a lot of us held the belief that we hold little respect for those who break the law, and therefore illegal immigrants, but also that people are innocent until proven guilty, so the "go back to where you came from" statement simply doesn't make sense to us, when we automatically assume the person has every right to be there.
We also talked about ancestry, the difficulty many of us have with understanding the need to know their ancestry, or even the problems with using ancestry in an argument relevant to current issues and thedifference between that and what makes up a person right now. Now that caused a few fireworks, because some people take their geneaology very seriously, but many of us also place very little importance on individual relations.
One really interesting topic we had was on the subject of rudeness itself. The topic initially started with a question (from one of my fellow UK-ers, I think. Unfortunately the site seems to be really slow today for some reason,so don't take my word for it) on why people often don't smile back at her when she gives someone a friendly smile. This somewhat confused me too, being from a rural area of Scotland, where its fairly common to stop and chat to your naighbours on a walk or such like, and I too had experienced this, especially in places like Glasgow, or worse, London. What we eventually discovered after a fair bit of confusion and rude answers (since, yes, rude questions elicit rude answers. we don't take it to heart) was that there seems to be two types of politeness in the world - positive-aspect and negative-aspect. Myself and the initial poster of the question appear to be from area with positive-aspect politeness. What that means is that certain gestures, like waving, smiling to someone you pass, saying hi to someone you're next to for any length of time, saying "excuse me" as you squeeze past someone in the street, is considered "polite", kind, or the norm. In an area of negative-aspect politeness, the situation is quite different, and indeed the gestures mentioned previously would be seen as positively rude. Negative-aspect isn't a "bad" thing like the term may suggest, but rather it is just the opposite way of thinking to the positive-aspect areas where forward actions are made by a person towards another person in society. In a Negative-aspect society, politeness is keeping out of peoples way, not demanding attention from someone you don't know through speaking to them, or doing many of the gestures perhaps considered polite in a positive-aspect society. When we reached that conclusion, it was quite amazing to us that all this time, we had been misunderstanding cultural norms in the areas we had been visiting, especially since the negative-aspect way of thinking is evident in many large cities, where huge numbers of people live and work, such as London, or Glasgow, where I had previously experienced this sort of thing.
The thing is, these revelations are just a couple of the things that have become evident through people simply asking questions that would not otherwise be asked, and through people understanding that careful consideration and carefully worded replies are needed to solve such sensitive issues, as well as not taking rude come-backs to heart. It has been invaluable to me on the forum, especially for realising cultural differences between that I was brought up in, the various different parts of America, Canada, and a number of other countries as well, as well as confusion over language and differences in political correctness across the world. It kind of makes me sad that many of these revelations could likely never have been made if we were to bring up the subject in regular society. I also realise that in many other, perhaps less friendly forums this thread full of revelation would not still exist, alive and kicking as it is today. In fact, todays topic is again the topic of racism, and whether groups set up to help people from certain countries or races don't actually help to perpetuate further segregation.
Anyway, if anyone has anything to say about any of the above topics, feel free to contribute in the comments (just keep things civil). For now, I'm going to sort out my uni timetable for next week, spend some more time back over at the LHC, figure out when I will have time to do a full henna on my hair (I know my hair is quite red-ish anyway especially with the slight sun-bleaching on my ends, but I want MORE GINGER!! heehee), and then iron my outfit and head to Tai Chi tonight as final prep for our demonstration tomorrow.
Speak soon, folks
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment