Hola y bienvenidos, mis watchers mas bonita en el mundo!

*sighs* Good day to you! I hope it finds you well. Well, now that we've all hopefully had a good day of boozing it up and shenanigans worth sharing when we're too old to bump-muffins, let's re-visit something I touched on a few months back which *scritches her neck* well, it seems some folkes just didn't get what I was saying, incidentally or intentionally.

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/25023266/

Re-reading everything I wrote on this one, it's still such an odd point to me. I know many of us, most of us, maybe, have been raised to fear "The Other" to some extent. Even the most open-minded of folkes have their boundaries *head tilts* which is fine. We all have our comfort zones and to a degree that's a healthy thing. However, I think it's an oddity to me how many people get such a vile knee-jerk reaction to just the word "diversity" or "inclusion" and if not the word, just the concept, makes them a bit uneasy. Now, some of that is programming, believe me, I know. Having been raised in a VERY stereotypical Southern Baptist home by parents in abject denial of the nature of their child's very bodily configuration, I need no lectures on that.

However, I still think what's odd is how much we, all of us, never think about just how much our world is just one big example of how we've benefited from those before us who've seen the benefit of learning from different cultures. Call it "appropriation" or what-have-you but, at least in America, practically everything we interact with is the end result of such an intermingling of influences, adapting ourselves and our world with the little bits of other worlds which juuuuuust fit into our comfort-zones enough to seem beneficial. From the food we eat to the style of our clothes, all these things are the end result of opening ourselves to other cultures and other ideas. Do you really think that's just "English" you're speaking? Do you listen to Rock Music? Rap? When did you last eat a Taco? Enjoy spaghetti? A pizza?

*smirks* Do you read 'The Bible'?

And thus started someone's angry comment... *sighs, chuckling*

It seems to me that for many people, it's a certain level of tribalism, coupled with a lack of objective self-evaluation. *raises her hands* Now, bear with me please, lovely watcher, if you have thus far.

Think of it like making a new friend, yea? Say that we meet someone new and are deciding if this could be a potential new pal... First off, there has to be a level of affinity, someone can't be too different for us to acquaint ourselves. If they're too alien to our world we Koopa Troop up and that's that. However, if someone is just similar enough to ourselves to relate to, we may draw a bit closer. They speak the same language, like some of the same songs etc. etc... Once closer we start seeing the differences in degrees, cataloguing them subconsciously. We maybe find one or two we are somewhat interested in- something simple, like a TV show they like which we've never heard of. So we give that difference a try and we find that -lo and behold- we kinda like it. Maybe we try out some other nuance of this new person for size, a favourite song of theirs, a food they like. Maybe we become comfortable enough with them that we move a little closer still... a club they visit, a holiday they observe, maybe even a religious view they hold. Little by little, poco a poco, there is a paradigm shift for us and our concept of "normal" changes... just a little.

This is how we survive and grow stronger as a species. *smiles* Nothing strange or bizarre about it, survival and adaptation. We are social creatures after all. And you know what? *beams* That's pretty awesome.

Now, I know that at least some of you are typing some angry thing explaining to me how wrong I am, decrying "pee-see kulchoor", some nationalist rhetoric or what-have-you, or maybe re-posting this elsewhere to whine to your online group of unpleasant goblins. *winces* And that is your position, I accept that's where you are in life. Still, though ... that's pretty sad. To not only deny yourselves so much joy and growth but to try to discourage it in others too? With so much wonder and strangeness in this world, so many languages to learn, parties to attend, new myths to read, philosophies to discover, foods to try, ways to learn to laugh, sing, cry and the many many MANY ways to bang our bodies together like wild animals till we sweat and scream and cry out like beasts and believe that there is a god and she has the most gorgeous set of....

*ahem* anyways...


Enjoy your Siete De Mayo, lovely watchers. Try and enjoy the world while you can and all the amazing things in it, no matter how unusual they may seem to you. Like it or not, the world will only get smaller as the years march on and the internet's already here. Hiding behind flags and fairy-tales may keep the bogeyman away for a bit but we all have to grow up sometime. It's all we have, one world, one life to live and one love for us all to share. *blows a kiss*