American poet and scholar Ralph Waldo Emerson offered the
idea that the individual is the center of his or her own universe. ‘In the individual can be discovered all
truths, all experience. For the individual, experience must be direct and
unmediated by texts, traditions, or personality. But while Emerson’s suggestion
that self-reliance and independence provide one with a perspective of the world
from a non-conforming self, an actual look at the widely accepted
generalizations and stereotypes in existence seem to state that the Western
public perceives otherwise.
Emerson, the infamous Transcendentalist, stated “to believe
your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is
true for all men, -- that is genius”, Why then might one fail to understand
another as an extension of himself should such a person merely claim a
particular culture or religion different from one’s own? Perhaps this notion of the individual as
center of the universe keeps us isolated and unwilling to accept beliefs and
values that may seem distal to the comfortable norm.
Such discomfort with external lifestyles, most especially those of the Arab world, shed a light on the common ease with which the Western culture limits its views of the Middle East to those provided by government officials and journalists -- restrictive representations of an extreme few to stand for the whole.
Such discomfort with external lifestyles, most especially those of the Arab world, shed a light on the common ease with which the Western culture limits its views of the Middle East to those provided by government officials and journalists -- restrictive representations of an extreme few to stand for the whole.
Palestinian-American and former professor at Columbia
University, the late Edward Said coined the term “orientalism” in his
controversial book of the same title to suggest that the West views the Arab
world through a “lens” of preconceived notions.
Depictions of persons of Arabic decent in the popular media are far from
realistic, confined to the perspective of Arab as extremist; as terrorist. They create an unchanging, undeveloped image
of a barbaric Middle Eastern culture.
When one seeks a reason for such a stalemate perspective
into the Arab world, it becomes clear that irrational fears seem to play a role
of breathing life into this “orientalism” -- fears kept aflame by shock-factor
focused media personnel and finger-pointing government agencies. Descriptives that for any other ethnicity
would be frowned upon as controversial racial profiling, for the Muslim
counterpart are accepted as almost necessary because of fears of jihad-like
attacks.
In truth, the larger majority of persons of Arabic decent
seek peace and coexistence just as does the greater part any nationality. Extremists, such as Al Queda, who happen to
follow a warped Islamic faith fail to offer an accurate depiction of the
population of Arab Muslims just as the Klu Klux Klan fails to offer an accurate
depiction of the Southern American; just as the Third Reich fails to offer an
accurate depiction of anyone of German heritage.
Putting any sense of accuracy into generalizations or
permitting oneself to accept a depiction of a small group as factual
representation for the whole, steals away any unique insight we might have had
into the relationship between self and another.
Conformity. And as R.W. Emerson
warned “this conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a
few lies, but false in all particulars”,
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