More on the book FIELDWORK
My last entry I eluded to the fact that I had started to read this book. It has become a rather complicated story. It is a contrast, compare type story between two types of foreigners in Thailand. One group are Christian missionaries, who have been spread the work and word of the Christan god in Thailand for 4 generations and the other group are anthropologists studying the natiave people.
On page 257 is a quote, which I think so far is what the book is about. "unless we understood our own culture, we cannot understand ourselves-----and we simply cannot understand our culture from the inside." We cannot reach the wisdom of knowing ourselves unless we leave the narrow confinement of the customs, beliefs and prejudges into which we are born.
To me, that means we must expand ourselves, and not be afraid of going a little (or a lot farther) figuratively or literally.
This doesn't mean we need to reject our culture, but we should take a good look at it in an objective way.