The Life, Thought Process and Opinion of a Foreigner
Dear Stemians,
So I'm living 13,975km away from home and I have been doing this for nearly 10 years, every year I try to find the time to go back, see the family, chat with old friends, South Africa is a beautiful country but I can safely say that England has become my home, unfortunately even though I can speak nearly perfect English and use some fancy big words in conversation when I need to impress people I'm still a foreigner, making connections in a foreign country is hard. My social life is extremely busy but the amount of real connections that I've felt over the years I could probably count on my one hand.
You see no matter how many days go by I find myself discussing South Africa, I have many South African friends some of which I knew when I was a kid - do you want to hear something funny? Well when you are in a foreign country and you meet someone from your country you almost immediately become friends! Its so weird but sometimes just hearing someone speak in a familiar accent can help you find common ground with a complete stranger.
I find the whole idea just simply fascinating, I mean on the one hand if you ever met this person while you were both "back home" you probably wouldn't even give him a second thought but here, miles away from where you were born you might just at least take the time to find out something about him. Like I said I have many South African friends.
The other thing that usually paints me as a foreigner are all the local jokes, to be in the middle of a conversation, somebody makes a joke or a reference to something from Englands past and the only person who didn't get it was you. it makes you feel stupid.Even when it's explained to you you probably wouldn't get it but you know that the next time you hear a reference like this you going to laugh and just allow that moment of 'not knowing' to pass.
The sense of humour thing is crazy, living here I actually discovered that each individual country has their very own sense of humour, like a commonly shared opinion of what is funny. It's crazy to think I actually found English sense of humour to be f*king hilarious! I mean there's just some comedies that would never make it in US, take inbetweeners for example, I cried so many times from laughter alone watching inbetweeners could you ever imagine watching that same show but only this time it was with American boys? It just would not work.
Let go back to common ground... common ground. Common ground is an easy thing to find, honestly take it from me you could find common ground with some of the strangest people on this planet. just by taking the time to listen to what they have to say. So we have to ask ourselves why do you you both need to be in a foreign country just to find common ground?
Another thing you notice as a foreigner are divided communities, people that stick together, live in the same area and attend events celebrating their respective cultures, this is very common practise across various different cultures, and some of the people I meet at these events have been here for decades and don't even have one English friend? do you realize how strange that is that you would travel across the globe and live in a foreign country that long without successfully integrating yourself with the natives of that country?
It's interesting to see how diverse one place can really be and at the same time how segregated people choose to be, identifying yourself as something different to what it means to all be human. How is it that some countries can be in the trillions in debt and still afford to send thousands of men with guns across the sea to change a culture they don't fully understand, what makes them right and the people of their targeted country wrong? I can tell you personally that majority of South Africans I meet here are kind, generous and welcoming but extremists exist everywhere and it's much easier to stigmatise an entire nation than try to find common ground especially when that nation holds valuable resources you can extort once you've installed change (But lets not get into that today)
You really have to wonder if this separation and these "identities" we experience are all part of the plan, these characterizations we've constructed as a society to represent our beliefs and alignments. left, right, feminist, gay, black, white... "South African". We see it in football stadiums often, we see fights break out in the stands as a result of a few men kicking a ball around for 90 minutes, people getting enraged with several cases of fatalities.
How is it possible that we've drifted so far away from finding common ground with each other, communities have broken apart, the world runs on greed and every man is looking after themselves? One possible reason for this can be described as the typical magicians trick, the sleight of hand. This trick is being performed by our governments every single day, it goes back to what Sun Tzu writes in the art of war "Divide and Conquer", keeping the general masses distracted by allowing them to assume that they have power to change things while at the same time creating divides. These self identifications we can hide behind to separate us from our neighbours. There is strength in unity and the government fears unity across the public. It's a logical strategy, open borders plays a key roll in that strategy, and I say that as a foreigner.
have you ever stopped to wonder why we don't see a political party focused on pulling back all their troops from war? To disengage from conflict and focus on bringing peace without the use of violence? why are all the political party's so divided on unimportant issues like gender and race and yet so united on subjects like globalisation, monopoly and war. The easy answer is the art of "staying in power", society has blindly trusted it's leaders to bring abundance and prosperity when all they'e done is spread poverty and scarcity. A system of fear, fear for your neighbour, division and internal conflict to keep its citizen occupied while it continues with it's main Agenda, the one percent do not ever want to become part of the 99%, they seem themselves as an entirely different species and we are but human resources to dispose of. We believe that we're voting for change when all we are really doing is voting for TV personalities. The main stream media are feeding us with lies each and every day insuring that we keep the divide.
Everything is changing, we are fast approaching one of the largest paradigm shifts this planet has ever seen, we are realizing that money doesn't need to rule the world and there is enough space on this planet for everyone and everything to survive, we are realizing that we are much more fulfilled and happy when we look after one another, we are discovering that technology holds the key to future prosperity. Block chain technology will be the conduit for this change, people like @dan who are working several technologies to enable protocols for the re-distribution of wealth across the globe. These are exiting times my fellow steemians and I feel like at the end of this global transformation I will no longer feel like a foreigner as I'll be part of the largest global community in history and we will all finally be united and seek common ground to finally achieve success as a species.
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Nice post
I agree with what you wrote about politics. Most political parties are essentially the same thing, and only focus on small differences. I also agree that abroad you might end up being friends with people from your home country just because you are from the same country. I lived abroad for 7 years and I found that people who hang out with compatriots have a hard time integrating into the new culture later on. I tried to avoid this. Although you will be lonely at first when you do meet locals it will be much easier.
Really inspiring, we are living and working in England since late 2013!