Having travelled in different South Asian countries, in the Middle East and in Africa, I have become sensitive and accustomed to different cultural norms and ways of living. Yet, what strikes me the most is the innate human nature that seems to underlie all human existence. Whether you are in a desert in Jordan encountering a bedouine, in the Himalayas in Nepal with a Buddhist monk or in the jungle in Kenya with a local farmer, the human contact that you are experiencing has the same essence as anywhere in the world.
In today’s society, we are accustomed to identifying a particular place as our home, we develop a sense of belonging to this place and differentiate between ourselves and other accordingly. We talk about cultural differences, how we do things in a certain country or region, how such cultural and societal conditioning shapes us into who we are. Yet, we often neglect the similarities we have with our fellow human-beings.
As I embarked on my journey from South Asia to the Middle East and Africa, I could not help but reflect on the innate human nature that has intrigued us for a number of years. It seemed that there really was something significant and strong within all of us that bound us together as the human race.
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Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau and other philosophers have written about the topic extensively. Check out their work if you are as intrigued by humans as I am!
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