living in different countries taught me that my way of seeing the world is just one of many ways seeing the world. what i also learned is that it’s really difficult to understand a people until you’ve spent considerable time being in their shoes, so to say.
it’s easy to come to a place as an outsider and make instant judgments about what’s going on. it’s harder to be open to things, to sit and absorb what’s going on around your new world and try to make some sense of it without fear, with sympathy and compassion. it’s a skill every journalist should learn to master.
i always wanted to learn different languages because i wanted to learn how people of different cultures feel and think. so much can be gleaned from how a language is structured and what is important in the language.
i’m lucky that english is the international language. many people speak it, and many things are published in english. there’s so much in the world that’s in english – books, movies, magazines, websites etc. gives me a better understanding of what’s going on in the world than when i would understand just chinese or indonesian. my world view as an indonesian-only speaker would be very different.
where is this going? these are just some thoughts that relate to diversity and journalistic ethics… i think that being in someone’s skin – whether it be through language, or experience or just being and absorbing, helps people break barriers and go beyond easy stereotyping and thoughtless discrimination. to be discriminating – between good or bad, ethical or not – is not necessarily a bad thing. to discriminate, is something else. i think in the end people would discriminate less if they really understood what was going on, and if they knew what it felt like to be in someone else’s skin. literally and figuratively.
