Conversation Reflection. October 28, 2010

Today we watched a Film entitled First Person Plural, by Deann Borshay Liem. The film and the assignment A^2 assigned helped me to put together some of the central ideas about English 150. One thing I put together was difference. Because Dean was Korean, she felt she had to impress her American parents so that maybe she would be reunited with her Korean Family. this is interesting to me because she was so young that she barely remembered anything of her original home. She felt some fundamental yearning to be with people that looked and acted like her. This key aspect of difference could be a innate reason why people in general have a hard time getting along. Deann admits during the film that she loved and cherished her American, adoptive mother because she was dependent on her for survival. So this love for her false mother could have been purely primitive survival instinct. Although, her mother loved her as one of her own, she never felt quite right. Once she gained Independence from her mother, and moved out of their house, she started to feel the yearning to know her mother and family again. It seems that people want to group up with people like themselves, who have a lot of common culture. Is this why when people of other cultures disagree with each other they turn to violence and war? People of different cultures and races do not completely understand what it is to actually BE someone else. They don't know how to live somewhere else. the only way to do that, is to fully immerse yourself in another culture. That seems like a tall order. Now take into account how many YEARS it would take to understand the motivation, joy, sadness, hope, recreation, social etiquette, family structure, class system, government and almost an infinite amount of interactions of an entire culture. Are we all to different to get along?