Today I did what I tend to do when I am extremely bored, I tried to get myself lost. Like actually lost, drive down random streets, try to find something I never knew existed. Usually I just end up running into the highway or a familiar route and head home but not after some thought.
Today I was really thinking about national identity and nationalism. You see many cars drive by with some sort of American representation whether it be a bumper sticker or flag flying from the antenna. While it is great being proud of where you are from and having that pride be obvious it is another thing to be ignorant of other countries, other cultures, other peoples. Nationalism is certainly not uniquely American but it is a sort of disease. I think spending time in Europe has made this more clear to me. Europeans have a vast knowledge of American culture as well as the culture of the countries surrounding them. Europeans also commonly speak more than one language, many of our instructors and special instructors spoke up to seven different languages! People who worked at McDonalds even spoke more than one language. Schools in Holland teach their students English starting in elementary school; many on the border also speak German! Bi-lingual Americans are much more difficult to find and some people scoff at others speaking their native languages in America saying "You are in America, speak English!".
Now this isn't meant to be hateful I just think that people should want to know more about the rest of the world. People should want to meet and interact with people of different cultures. People should seek this information out on their own, or better yet schools should teach about the modern cultures of the world. It just frustrates me when people say negative things about Mexicans, or Brazilians coming to this country when they don't even bother to find out why they left, what their life is like there. Our minds should not be restricted by borders.
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