Encounters with the Other

• Encounters with the “Other”:  A History and Possibilities 
  By Barry Oshry 
• Act I
  
  How Our Culture and the Culture
  of the “Other” Came to be
  
  1.
  Many cultures may look strange to us,
  but not to the “others”.
  And our culture may look strange to the “others”
  but not to us.
  That simple fact is the beginning of understanding.
  
  2.
  We may feel that our culture is simply
  the way things have been, are, and ought to be.
  The “others” likely feel the same way 
  about their culture.
  
  3.
  We and the “others” were not born 
  with the rules of our cultures;
  we learned them 
  from parents and elders,
  teachers, and peers,
  and media.
  
  4.
  In both cultures
  we and the “others” absorbed
  the do’s and don’ts of our cultures – 
  appropriate and inappropriate emotionality,
  ways of speaking,
  clothing,
  interacting with elders and 
  people of different sexes,
  and much more.
  We were taught our culture’s beliefs and values,
  rites and rituals,
  ways of solving problems,
  seeking justice,
  expressing joy, or sadness, or grief,
  and much more.
  
  5.
  In both cultures, these rules were taught 
  as the ways to live, to survive,
  the ways to be in the world.
  
  6.
  In time, we and the “others” learn our rules so well
  that we no longer experience them as rules,
  they become the lenses through which we view the world.
  Except we don’t see our lens
  and how it shapes what we see.
  Instead, we believe we see the world
  as it really is.
  
  7.
  Neither we nor the “others” 
  experience our culture as an option,
  as one of many possibilities.
  Each of us experiences our culture as 
  the way things are or ought to be.
  And then we meet.

Read the full text of Encounters with the Other here

References
Barry Oshry
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