Labels

The world is changing. Long time ago the East was splendour and trimmed, while the West was nothing but an ugly sack of civilization. God the fairest of all did His job, He took he wisdom and light from the East and threw it to the West. Nowadays, the East turn it’s troll face toward West while the West enjoy it’s spotlight.

Judging one culture to another is simply unfair. The exchange of ideas open wide opportunity for both cultures to see differences and how to face it. This “global culture” has made jeans easy to wear for people on the Eastern part of the world, and made Western people familiar using chopsticks to eat dimsum. What was once seen as something unusual in the East becoming trend, such as Harajuku. Also, what was once seen as joke like K-Pop for the West is now enjoying it’s peak of popularity. This global culture has peeled out hipocrisy among both culture and let the prejudice go. However, stereotypes are still there, and vastly develop inaccurate stigma.

For instance, when I was in USA, with dark complexion, mongoloid facial and mini feature, I enjoy a lot of judgement because I introduced myself as a “Louie”. That name, for them, is too European for a native-looked person from Pacific like me. “That couldn’t be your real name, you must have some weird-traditional name like Umpaluluka or Liliokatayahani,” thats the impression that I got from their looks. I believe they’ll also shock if I told them how Islamic my real name is, due to the fact that those teenager’s imagery about Muslims are nothing but middle easterners, beards, turbans, and guns.

Fighting over wrong stereotypes is a never-ending job. I wouldn’t say that it is impossible to create a world without labels, but apparently we are slowly moving on that path. At least there are still alot of people who really try to bridge gap between East and West via discussions or direct interaction. As John Lennon once had imagined before, let us hope that someday, maybe, our grandchildren could live together peacefully without awakwardness on facing culture and technology gap.