REVERSE CULTURAL SHOCK

After 8 months of traveling around Southeast Asia and slowly sinking in Asian, mostly Buddhist culture, I came to Australia. Nice huh? Yeah... Though, my very first reaction was: I want to catch the first plane back to Bali!!! Surprisingly, I felt very uncomfortable and much reluctant to be here. To see clean streets and identical suburban houses, wide perfectly sealed roads with sidewalks, to have procedures for everything due to safety standards, to eat food I haven’t been eating for a long time, to be among Caucasians! Nevertheless, I ended up going to Asian restaurants in Perth, trying to be among Asians, smiling to them on the streets. I was having a problem do adjust myself to „my own” culture!

First day in Perth. Watching TV... Commercials every 15 mins. Pain killers! Take them immediately, you don’t have time to think why your body is painful, do you? Is it headache starting? Tranquilizers! If you don’t take, you gonna be nervous! O gosh, why suddenly I’m so nervous? Wrinkle and anti-cellulite creams, oh shit, I’m getting older, I should be using them already, hurry! Food, more food, the best food, McFood! Am I hungry? Insurances! You have to insure everything, from your nail polish to your house and life, otherwise, you are going to be screwed up, because what if...? Oh my Goddess, I’m screwed! I started to change channels compulsively... Oprah Winfrey’s ridiculous show, something about how to manage your money. So there is Miss Great Financial Advisor in studio, who spent obviously a lot of money on her education, and is enough qualified to say, listen everybody!, you need bloody big dough to have a huge house with nice garden, two cars, kids in collage and descent retirement! But even though you work your ass off, forget about having another kid (you really want to have!) or go for holiday to Hawaii (as you are knackered from earning money)! Inflation, economic crises, currency ups and downs! We have to save, invest, multiply, we have to have, to have more, to have...! It took me a while I finally switched the TV off. The thing is: I DON’T HAVE TO! I don’t need to use any bloody expensive creams, I have nothing to insure, and hopefully my son will manage to earn money by himself without counting on millions from my untimely death! If I get older, or sick, or even die, well, it happens to people, doesn’t it? We are afraid of everything and everybody around! We pass these fears to our children by over-caring and constant admonition: don’t touch it! don’t trust! watch out! How much money corporations make on these threats we all submit to…? Yeah…

What a nice silence! My pulse slowly is coming back to normal. My thoughts are becoming more focused and happier...

I’ve been to places in Asia, where these threats did not arrive yet, where people have nothing to insure or the insurance fees are too expensive for them, they are very bad clients of McFood, so none of them are fat or die from heart attacks, they don’t know about workaholism, how to manage their money and how to use computer or internet... Some of their kids cry in horror seeing the white person for the first time! Don’t you think it’s funny? People in these remote areas still live very slowly and without so many “civilized” fears. They accept their lives as they are. They treat suffering as a natural part of human condition, but it doesn’t mean they don’t suffer. They are not over-caring towards their children, let them explore the world, although all children are looked after well, happy without all this nagging and without sophisticated toys... This approach to life is dying...


On the other hand, to more and more young Asians, either in their own countries or living in „white” world (where they, of course, long to live), Western model of life is the most attractive and desirable! The desire to be white reached its most ridiculous level in case of Michael Jackson, but try to find in Asian malls a cream or body balm without the words: white or whitening! Real challenge, believe me! The whiter you are and the more Caucasian your face looks like, the better!

Generalization? Maybe. Probably. Whatever...

However, I’m Caucasian, the daughter of Western culture! All in all, the Western culture serves me well. I can talk to people all over the world using modern technology, I can travel (alone), I’m well-educated smart ass, I’m self-sufficient, I can be promiscuous, nobody would ever dare to say when or to whom I should be married, or how I should be dressed, I could be educated equally to men... None of those things would be easily accessible for me in poor, traditional and remote 80% (or so) part of the world! Last but not least, I’m happy to be in Australia. All the experience here is simply fantastic: trip to bush, getting to know lovely Aussies and their easygoing lifestyle, taking photos of beautiful cities with my expensive camera...

Yeah, it’s just this uncomfortable feeling on the back of my head, that wherever on this world whites appeared, they gave themselves right to kill people and their traditions, to exploit their work, rape women. Australia has its own history of shame! Steeling the land, genocide, the case of "stolen generation"! They were taking half-caste children from their families to convert them to the Western way of life, to "civilize" them. What a lovely intention! And on the end - what a surprise! - they could have “civilized” servants, nicely dressed and speaking English. They did it to Aboriginal people for more than three decades and stopped not so long time ago, in 70s. Many Caucasians (sadly, mostly Polish immigrants and sadly, not to much surprise) I spoke to over here still have this narrow-minded Europe-centric point of view, which is based of the superior and arrogant certainty that our culture is the best and the rest of the world should adjust to it, even if they’ve been living in this land for 200 (sometimes 20) years and Aborigines have been here for thousands of years. Whites complain about violence and drinking, but who introduce the alcohol to them? They complain that Aborigines destroy their government issued houses. So what? Their culture was nomadic for ages, how can anybody think about changing it within a few generations? And why would anybody think about changing it in the first place? Because it doesn’t fit our way of life? Of course, now is now and Australian government tries to improve what is there to improve, but it looks like still they do it without really concerning the cultural differences...

I guess, everything is exactly like it should be and heading in the direction of somehow development. But... what a shame!

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