Hot & Cold

I am completely aware that Heidegger wants to avoid religion altogether, but I have decided I am going to take what I like from the reading and put it into lessons I have been learning on top of all of his ranting. So, to you Heidegger: frankly, my dear, I would quote a line from Gone with the Wind.

Due to my recent obsession with my intercultural studies class, the whole notion of who I will be when I finally get to India has gone wild. So far we have read two books on cross-cultural interactions. One is about how to get yourself out of your own cultural conditioning in order to respect and respond to others’; the other book is about understanding how the cultures are different based on regions (hot and cold climate behaviors, if you will).

To give you my bullet point Abernathy quotes from my notes on Tuesday’s class:
-- “He doesn’t want us to think like Descartes with “I think, therefore I am” because that says that what we think is all there is.”
-- “He wants us to think in terms of care, not compassion, but engagement.”
-- “There is a tension of who/what/how you are, of whether you would/would not do if you were/were not these things.”
The question I wrote to myself at the end of the class was, “You are a part of the scheme, but would ou still be you without the scheme?”

I know I am a far miss on all of this, but I started thinking about Sarah Lanier’s Foreign to Familiar as a result. In chapter seven, Lanier discusses a Korean friend who came to America who learned to culturally change who she was in each crowd. When she was around Westerners (Americans) she was that version of her; when Koreans were around, she switched back to that cultural condition. Lanier applauds this because she bridged the culture gap between Americans and Koreans in their work environment. While the Korean woman never became a Westerner herself, she ultimately learned how to relate to us. All of that is fine and wonderful, and I applaud the woman for bridging that gap, but I cannot help but wonder who her authentic self is in the midst of all this culture. If the concept of self is a social construction, then who really is this Korean woman underneath that social construction of dual roles?

I know the intended meaning behind the first bullet point statement, but I took it a different direction. If I think, and therefore I am, and I measure my existence by what I think and what I know, then Heidegger is right. That sort of thinking is wrong. What I think is not at all applicable in India a vast majority of the time.

As far as the second bullet and thinking in terms of engagement, there are multiple meanings for that word. But to be engaged in something is for it to have your attention and for your attention to be held there. When I get to India, my immediate response is not going to be care in terms of compassion. My initial reaction must be care in terms of engagement. To maintain my essent, I must understand the hows and whys of the Indians I encounter based on their own social constructions. I must maintain my essent outside of my cultural conditioning. It goes beyond being a bridge, it goes into being authentic, decentered self regardless of cultural conditioning or cultural placement.

COMMENTED ON BENJAMMIN'S