One of Us?

I have been watching, with huge interest, a program on Discovery called “Worlds Lost Tribes.. with Olly & Mark”. They travelled deep into West Papua and spent 4 months living with remote tribes, learning their culture and ways. Now I am something of a sucker for this kind of programme so I must have seen half dozen similar ones (although this one is very good). The thing that strikes me is often even though these tribes will be quite hostile to start with, particularly in this case (when they didn’t know they were coming and may never have encountered white people before,) they quite quickly move from threat to acceptance. The most striking element of this is, once they have accepted you, it is not conditional, as it is in the West, it is total. From stranger to part of the family (literally, they were adopted) in a matter of days.

When we meet people, we scan to see if they are like ‘us’, hence questions like “Where did you go to school / university”, “What do you do for a living?” “Where do you live?” etc. If we are approached on the street by someone of a different age / race / sex/ culture it is quite common to feel threatened; in fact, for some people their very presence is threatening. The trouble is with this is that this sense of threat automatically trips our Flight / Fight response, which of course they recognise, so theirs is triggered too! In this triggered state we are ‘unavailable’ (as mentally we have already left he situation), so unless the encounter takes a long time, then we can not collect any data to make us see them for who they are or what they have to offer.

In the West, our default position is rejection and suspicion. I remember reading this in “War & Peace”, many years ago “Pierre’s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes which he termed ‘good qualities’ in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.”

If you start with an open heart, you see all sorts of good in those around you. If you feel threatened and suspicious, all you find is more reason to feel that way. So which kind of life experience would you prefer to have?

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Jalal ad-Din Rumi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 11:09 and is filed under Flight / Fight, Personal Change, Values & Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.