thinking's VirtualTourist Home Page
| Page Views: 90,878 | EXPLORE YOUR WORLD LIKE A NATIVE! by thinking - last update: Aug 12, 2009 |
EXPLORE YOUR WORLD LIKE A NATIVE | Two World Natives: Harry & Tom |
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|  | IT IS THE HEART THAT SEES BEFORE THE HEAD |
"Perceptions are not whimscal but fatal" The most important thing I have learned through traveling is that the world's families mostly reflect their enclosed economic system and unique culture. We all soak up our society with our mother's milk. It is so close to us that we usually are not aware that our society is JUST ONE of an infinite number of ways of dealing with life's issues. Different cultures deal with life's issues differently due to their history, geography and resources. We often think that our way of doing things is the only way, the "natural" way. We have"learned" so well that it has all become unconscious -- the "SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS", to be precise. People live out their lives in these cultural contexts. Travel present the world's cultures to those rare few who have the time to experience and understand them. It is up to each one of us to use this knowledge to expand our options and choices during our lifetimes. So many times we believe that we are acting according to our own free will, but we are only following "cultural orders". Propaganda is the total ground of any culture as it confronts any individual figure. Propaganda, is not so much a message, but a total way of life. This is the nature of learned culture. Problems arise because people are unconsicous of their culture & do not know themselves & their own interests. They fail to use their human capacities. Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea to follow his real self, never regains its original dimensions. Focus on decoding 'culture vultures' with their degraded motives, ambitions, and their propaganda machine. The advertiser seeks to submerge perception and motive in a collective sound-light show of turbulent sensation. For cross-cultural views, see CROSS-CULTURAL INFO & STORIES TEACHING CULTURE WORLD LANGUAGES PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN USA | | | "Elizabeth" & "Tom" learning cultural differences |
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| | TRAVEL: AN EDUCATION OR JUST MORE CONSUMPTION? "I WANT TO JOIN THE FEW"
"SORRY, THERE ARE ALREADY TOO MANY."
"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."
"Why should I deem myself to be a chisel when I could be the artist?"
I have traveled around the world living and working in different cultures.
I have a deep and humane interest in cultural organization and economics, as both shape
one's life until we begin to think through how things work. This has been my real education, much more important than any of the many professional degree I have received.
Therefore, travel for me is not an end.
It is a means to learn how to use what is here to make one's life better.
Today, in our global village, every "city" in the world is a suburban "satellite" to every other city. All "hardware" city forms are obsolescent and tend toward the status of tourist attractions and museums.
The jet has given swift access to the entire planet as city, the housing and city styles of the immediate future will be as flexible and as programmed to taste as CD'S. The city can be tailored to the size and needs of any kind of group. It can be donned or doffed like clothing.
Today, as work becomes play through in depth involvement in knowledge, only festival cities will be meaningful to the new citizen of the global theater. There is no part of the world in which we do not participate, whether we know it or not. And there is no part of us which is not equally invaded by everything in the world.
"Nipping in" and "nipping out" anywhere in the world now involves responsibilities for having altered that part of the world. The drop-in and the dropout alter the situation totally. Internet communications literally "send" the sender to the remotest corners and back and bring the remotest people to us.
This "magnetic city" is our own nervous system, put outside as an enviornment of information.
This gesture of self-awareness scoffs at all the previous dimensions of "hardware'" planning, scale and education.
Now solutions lie NOT outside, but INSIDE the problems themselves. We can find them by recognizing their PROCESS patterns. Discovery comes from dialogue that starts with human beings sharing their ignorance. |
WHAT IS HOME EXCHANGE? | | | Gaston "Tom" in front of our apartment in Honolulu |
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| Tom enjoying a new & wonderful life |
| | CARPE DIEM Learn to make the most of life,
Lose no happy day.
Time will never bring them back,
Chances swept away.
Leave no tender word unsaid,
Love while love shall last;
For the mill will never grind with water that is past.
Sarah Dounedney |
Thinking through life "Words are things, a small drop of ink....
Falling like dew upon a thought.
They produce that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." | | | Tamir & Elizabeth in Manhattan in 2005. |
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| Elizabeth home at Villa Sassa (Lugano,Switzerland) |
| | INCREASE YOUR HUMAN CAPITAL THROUGH TRAVEL "THERE IS NOTHING MORE TERRIBLE THAN IGNORANCE IN ACTION" “It is easier to be a beggar than ignorant; for the beggar only wants money, but an ignorant person wants to develop his humanity which takes the effort of his lifetime to achieve". Human development is about much more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests. People are the real wealth of nations. Development is about expanding the choices people have to lead lives that they value. It is thus about much more than economic growth, which is only a means - if a very important one - of enlarging people's choices. For an overview of observations made while traveling the world see: GLOBALIZING POVERTY What is UTMOST intelligence? It means the FREE use of intelligence. A human being must be willing to follow any lead that he can see, undeterred by any inhibition, whether it is from laziness or other unfortunate personal characteristics, or intellectual tradition or the social conventions of his epoch. It becomes inconceivable that anyone should consent to conduct his thinking under demonstrable restrictions, once these restrictions have been recognized." |
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 Comments for thinking | | | | |
MedioLatino Sat Aug 15, 2009 12:45 UTC
Hi Elizabeth! Thanks for the nice wishes and the "supporting message"! :) Attila | SabrinaSummerville Thu Aug 6, 2009 22:03 UTC
How wonderful to hear from you Elizabeth!! You must surely have Irish roots somewhere?? I am new to my retirement but find, if anything, that I have far less free time than ever:-) | Mikebond Thu Aug 6, 2009 16:13 UTC
Hi Elizabeth! Thanks for your nice words. Maybe we will meet in Paris one day... | MM212 Wed Aug 5, 2009 14:42 UTC
Thank you! You seem to have travelled to some interesting places too. Will return to read your perspective. Cheers! M |
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