Europe: Where the History Comes From
Today at work, we had a consultant come in for the week to help us with our implementation of the software we support. The cool thing was the guy grew up in Holland. Not only had he grown up in Europe, but he is trilingual with dutch, english, and german (and in that order). I don't know how long he spent in Germany, but apparently he lived there for a time as well. Now he lives in Illinois doing his consulting job. So what's the point of me giving all these details? Well, as Eddie Izzard once said, "Europe is where the history comes from."
I (along with a few others on my team) got into a fairly lengthy chat with the guy that started on World War II. Most people that I've known (aka Americans) have a rather narrow understanding of the era. It's not their fault, it's just the way it's portrayed in textbooks and Hollywood. I don't want to this to come off as arrogant, but I like to think I have a little better understanding than the average person I meet on the street. While I originally started being interested about 10 years ago, I've only done solid research on it for the last 3-4 years. In that time, I've read things written by Americans and British along with translations from French and Germans. Needless to say, I've gained a much wider perspective of what happened during those years than I used to have.
This guy seemed to have all that down without the extensive years of reading books. The best part was he had the perspective on pretty much any topic. It was fascinating talking to him about all sorts of things. In some ways it is nice to be part of a country that's so large. In other ways, it kind of sucks. The lack of diversity and learning to deal with people who don't think exactly like us is one of the disadvantages. I think about the only thing that can be done to combat the ignorance is to make a concerted effort to immerse ourselves in other cultures. Anyways, that's my two cents on world politics even though a lot of people will think it doesn't have much to do with politics at all. That's for another day though.
I (along with a few others on my team) got into a fairly lengthy chat with the guy that started on World War II. Most people that I've known (aka Americans) have a rather narrow understanding of the era. It's not their fault, it's just the way it's portrayed in textbooks and Hollywood. I don't want to this to come off as arrogant, but I like to think I have a little better understanding than the average person I meet on the street. While I originally started being interested about 10 years ago, I've only done solid research on it for the last 3-4 years. In that time, I've read things written by Americans and British along with translations from French and Germans. Needless to say, I've gained a much wider perspective of what happened during those years than I used to have.
This guy seemed to have all that down without the extensive years of reading books. The best part was he had the perspective on pretty much any topic. It was fascinating talking to him about all sorts of things. In some ways it is nice to be part of a country that's so large. In other ways, it kind of sucks. The lack of diversity and learning to deal with people who don't think exactly like us is one of the disadvantages. I think about the only thing that can be done to combat the ignorance is to make a concerted effort to immerse ourselves in other cultures. Anyways, that's my two cents on world politics even though a lot of people will think it doesn't have much to do with politics at all. That's for another day though.
Labels: Miscellaneous
posted by Shawn Sparks at
7:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home