Bilbao vs. Sevilla?

Überfrustration.
Generalization.

It seems as though wherever I go people are telling me what the area I´ve lived, am from, or have visited, is like. I don´t need people from Bilbao to explain to me that all people from the South are lazy (because they´re not!!), just as I don´t need people from Sevilla to explain to me that all people from the Basque country are terrorists (because they´re not!!). And when I tell you I´m Dutch, don´t explain to me how we must all be stoners (because we´re not!!) and don´t explain to me how all Americans are ignorant (because we are not!!).

How do you convince someone of your own culture? You will not hear me say that generalizing is bad an sich, or that judging is bad. Judging and generalizing are a human way to create an opinion of something you do not really know. So that in itself is not bad. However, what is bad, is to hold on to your opinion as though you were connected by a navel cord. I don´t care if you think that comparison is gross, because it´s true. So many people feel that if they´re from a certain area or culture they have to judge a different culture in a certain way, and even though all clues point in the opposite direction, hold on to that opinion. For example, if I, Dutch, explain to you that I see more people smoking pot here than in the Netherlands, don´t explain to me that that is impossible. Don´t hold on to your own culturally drenched and culturally approved generalizing judgement when you know that you´ve been proved wrong.

I am absolutely no saint, and I know that I will make the same mistake from time to time. We all need our securities, and if someone tells me that smoking weed 4 times a day does not affect them at all, I will secretely (or not so secretely - knowing myself..) disagree, since I need to think that smoking weed four times a day is a bad thing. But then again, is this a generalization of culture or of society? I say no. I guess there are different degrees of generalization, the first one being of societies, the second one of habits.
Why do people need to generalize societies? Why this need to create little boxes (usually negative) where people can be stuffed in with verbal violence?

If I look at the two examples I have here in Spain, the whole: ´which city do you like better, Bilbao or Sevilla´ issue, it becomes quite simple. Or well, not simple as in easy to fix, but simple as possible to oversee. In Sevilla they generalize about people from Bilbao out of fear - they have a terrorist indepentalist movement called ETA and since its a dark corner of this geographic area, it creates fear. Fear of the area. Fear of the unknown. Fear of that which one cannot grasp. At the same time in Bilbao, generalization seems to come from a feeling of superiority. If you look historically there has always been competition between Bilbao and Sevilla. Sevilla being the port through which all the ´exotic´ merchandise entered the country, and Bilbao the port through which this merchandise was transported to the rest of Western Europe. Which port was more important? It seems as though this competition has left an air arrogance in Bilbao. And of course, I must not fall into the tradition I am critizing, not everybody generalizes in either area, but when speaking of the people that do generalize I feel that this is the conclusion one can make. The two reasons I have discovered to generalize are fear and arrogance.

It´s a bitter pill to swallow that when we generalize we are either fearful of arrogant. But then I would like to apply the other distinction I have made between the two degrees of generalization, namely generalizing societies or habits. I think that these two reasons can be applied to the first degree of generalization, of society.

And why do I dislike this? Because instead of learning from different cultures and trying to understand them (see my last blog post) we are explaining how these societies are. Constant and ruthless generalizations are what stand in the way of transcending cultural differences and looking for what we all have in common.





Slog: Saybia - The second you sleep

Thanks a lot for the comments on my last blog! I enjoyed reading them a lot!
@ Rudy: Haha, ik zou me daar geen zorgen over maken, uiteindelijk gaat het over wat je wil leren en niet wat je al geleerd hebt.
@ Charlene: Nenita, a ver si después del puente podemos quedar no?
@ Jesse: Thanks, nice comment - nomment.
@ Carine: ja inderdaad.. stom internet.. zeg als jullie weer vergadering bij iemand thuis hebben!
@ Anonymous: eres lo mejo ^d-
@ Monika: thanks! and yeah, haha, I promised myself I´d do better than when I was in Sevilla (I wrote like 3 posts in two months and then stopped..). I have to say I´m not a big fan of that ice breaker, for no reason in specific, because there´s nothing wrong with it, but I´ve just heard it soooo often.. Enjoy your 100!
@ Pierre-Hendrik: Haha, I loved performing those plays! I´m very happy to see you´ve posted too! I enjoyed reading it a lot!