Terminalcoffee discussion

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/chi...

I want to watch this over and over and over and over again.

We are all That Roommate, and the pressure is on us to read widely and read intelligently, so that we may try to tackle the seemingly insurmountable task of dismantling the single stories we have in our heads.

Powerful piece Angie, really enjoyed it and yes sadly, I'm that roommate occasionally. But you're right, to read widely is the key to open a mind.

'I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything and learned that the World's 'otherness' is antidote to confusion'
Mary Oliver.

yea, it was really good.. i guess the moral of the story would be to write what you know but be open to read many different things, and not to assume or presuppose a certain worldview on what you don't understand.. i learned this concept while studing religion and philosophy, its the same thing, how people have one view of a religion from what they hear, but dont understand it, its better to learn about someones beliefs by listening to those who believe it, just like its better to learn about a certain place by listening to one who has experienced living there.. i try not to assume or presuppose things but am often discouraged when at times i'm looked at as weird for not reading social ques, like i am supposed to know the person before i get to know them..

This is so good.

I really like the TED series. I learn something from each one of them.

BunWat wrote: "Terrific talk. But to say we are all the roommate is kind of putting people back into single story boxes, isn't it? Sometimes we are the roommate and sometimes we are Chimamanda Adichie. Sometim..."

Good point, Bun. We are definitely not the roommate sometimes; I think in regards to my suffering from mental illness, or someone else being GLBTQ, or having a disability, each of us will have times when we will be Chimamanda.

That said, on the larger scale, I'm not sure how this works within privilege. As she pointed out, she grew up reading white narratives, and white narratives are propagated everywhere in this world, especially the British/American narratives.

A Tibetan friend once asked me what Friend I was, then told me that I was probably Phoebe. He actually did believe that American "friends" were like this, but then I pointed out that I was probably closer to the character of Velma, from Scooby Doo. He agreed with that, and thus, knew of another set of American friends.

The fact that I have a choice, to be able to say "I am not like this, I think I am more like this" is a privilege. An American Indian isn't going to be able to say, "Actually, I don't live in a teepee and I'm not an alcoholic and I am not jobless" because as a white American, we aren't exposed to stories outside of that. A similar thing is with Indians eating meat/eating cow, in particular. All we Americans hear is that cows are sacred in India and they don't eat them, when the issue is much more complicated.

So if I were talking to Chimamanda, we would probably be able to have a conversation about white literature, which pertains to my life and my understanding of the world. But as soon as we got to "African" literature, Nigerian literature, I wouldn't be able to talk because I know nothing, and in that case, I do think that the majority of TCers (and probably people on goodreads as a whole, since websites like these tend to be white-dominated for some reason), will be the roommate more often.

I'm not sure; those are just my thoughts. If Mindy were around, maybe she'd be willing to contribute to this interesting conversation.

BunWat wrote: "In one way I suppose that does mean that if I am a member of one of those cultures I am more likely to have access to more choices of stories when I'm looking for something to match up to my experience and help me to make sense of it. "

With one except, every single "Asian" author I've read this year is either American/British born, or now lives in American/the U.K., so I totally think this true.

That makes me want to puke a little, so next year I think I'm going to try to focus on authors who are semi-permanently located in their home countries.

My views are constantly changing, so I understand how you feel. We just gotta keep on keepin' on, I guess.

I do believe that we all feel the same range of human emotions, and everyone wants happiness and wishes not to suffer. We can stand on the outside of a situation and realize how hard it was for someone to overcome, and reflect on the things we've overcome in our own lives.

Sometimes I think that just *knowing this* isn't enough, though. It's too abstract. No one wants to suffer, but some people are born into this world suffering, and we can't just look at them and go, "you should be happy! we all wish for happiness!" without realizing what they *need* in order to be happy.

It's sort of like... getting good grades in school. We all, presumably, want to do well in school so we can go on to do more schooling or get a great job. I've actually had a friend tell me that "well, if you really want to do x, y, z, then you should start working harder, stop sleeping so much, stop letting your anxiety keep you from entering doorways, etc. because you won't get to x, y, z unless you do that." This was in college when I was struggling with severe depression and anxiety, and you could swap that out with any number of things that disadvantage a person. In order to get those good grades, first I have to go to therapy and be put on meds, but I also have to get a job because I have to afford those things, and that takes away the studying time... and in the end, that person can't really relate to me because for them, if they are not a sufferer of the things I suffer from, they don't have these additional tasks.

So in that case, we really have to understand how we're privileged and how someone else might not be, and only then do I think we can truly "get it" sorta.

I don't know. There's also an essay on Lupus about "the spoon theory" which is something similar to what I've described. I guess... maybe these are just two of the layers of humanity: the threads that combine us, all of the things we all hope for and the tales we share, and the lived experience? It'd be nice if we lived in a world where we could look at the religious beliefs of someone else and point out the similarities, rather than the differences, and still continue with our own way of practicing.

... Maybe my name should be "tl;dr" haha. I didn't mean for it to get this long!