Traveling, A Process of Acceptance toward Multicultural Diversity

(Shanis Irsamayanti – Brawijaya University)

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.” – Robert Stevenson

In this modern, super-sophisticated era, our daily life will always getting
attached to the advanced technology in many ways. Without technology, we would be
helpless. One of the most important parts of the advanced technology would be the
internet. By the help of the internet, with just one swipe, news from all over the world
could get into our hands. Communications can be pulled through many ways from
social media up to video call, connecting those who lived far away to be closer as ever.
If we want to know about anything, we can just google it and voila! Everything will be
displayed onto your smartphone screen in seconds. For those who live in a tropical
country and would like to know about the winter, for example, they can just look it up
on the internet and find out pictures of snow covering the lands like a beautiful white
blanket. For those who curious about the great walls of China; from the process of its
build, the historical background of the sites, until the wonderful pictures from many
angles, it is possible for them to get it all from the internet. If we want to know how
astronauts brush their teeth in the spaceship, we could just browse their videos on
youtube and we could watch it directly from NASA official channel. We could find out
everything with less effort, without having to actually go to the actual places.
Everything becomes undeniably faster and easier.

As everything getting practical, however, there is no fun to only watching

something so unique and historical from a small screen on our hands. We may know
how things work, we may get new knowledge, but it is nothing compared to those who
actually experienced it in real life.

Snow looks so white and beautiful on the phone screen, but the ones who took
the picture probably actually freezing, packed up in layers and layers of thick clothes to
keep their body warm. The great walls looked amazing, but those who made the video
probably have to climb thousand steps and have to take a rest once in a while before
they get to see that breathtaking view. The astronauts’ life looked so fun to watch,
weightlessly floating in the air and all, but they have to be able to control and balance
themselves all the time. When we see something, we tend to see it from our own little
knowledge and point of view. This will make us to create our own judgment out of
everything that we have seen, which known as stereotypes.

Traveling will raise our tolerance awareness

Stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a particular group of people

(Cardwell, 1999). Stereotypes could be in any form such as cultural, racial, religions,
beliefs, and so on. Usually, stereotypes would be created by a group of people who live
in the same place or environment. For example, most of Indonesian people will think
that women with fairer skin considered as prettier than those with darker skin – and this
stereotype also happen in most Asian countries because it has become Asians beauty
standards. It is an image that has been built in our society and environments, and the
stereotypes will always be there; whereas people from other continents surely do not
feel the same because they have their own beauty standard. People outside Asia would
probably think that our beauty standards are ridiculous and they think that skin color
does not define how pretty an individual is.

No matter how accurate or inaccurate a stereotype is, it is mostly based on some

reality, some truth, albeit just a kernel of truth or half-truth, something that actually
happened (Phuong, 2015). It can be said that a stereotype appear as a result of lack of
information about something. When we know about a little thing or two about a
particular thing, we would connect the dots – a few knowledge that we know – and
those connected dots will result as stereotypes. For example, some Indonesian people
who have never acknowledged androgynous or cross-dresser model would tend to
stereotyping them as transsexual, and labeled them to belong in the LGBT community.
This negative stereotypes - which is not true at all because androgynous or cross dresser
are totally different from transsexual – appeared due to their lack of knowledge in that
field.

Another example is the stereotypes that appeared among Indonesians about

Korea. So many Indonesian people invade Korean artists’ post or news with the word
“plastic”, means that all Korean had plastic surgery in the past and that their faces are
all “fake”.

Indonesian people also had this behavior of stereotyping something so quickly.

For example, stereotypes about ethnicity in Indonesia. Javanese people usually
stereotyped as slow talker and ‘fake’ because they act like they’re nice and friendly in
front of you but talk about you behind their backs. Bataknese people are stereotyped as
violent and rude, while people from Papua stereotyped as troublemakers and
uncivilized.

Therefore, how would these people feel when they know about these stereotypes
that attached to them? Well, we would never really know, but they would surely felt
misunderstood, hurt, and even angry about the stereotypes attached to them.
Androgynous is normal, it is about how people want to dress themselves to the world
and it is far different of transsexual. Some Korean people might do surgery in part of
their body or face, which is not a bad thing either because it is their face and they can do
what they want, but there are also more of them who don’t get surgery. Javanese people
are polite, to the extent that they would not talk directly because they just do not want to
hurt other’s feelings, but this could be applied to all Indonesians. Indonesians in general
hates confrontations, which is why people rather talk behind their back, so it should not
be applied to Javanese people only. Bataknese people talk loudly but that does not mean
that they are violent, instead, some of Bataknese I know are the nicest people I’ve ever
known. Some people from Papua do have bad temper but that does not mean they are
uncivilized.

Stereotyping is not an entirely a bad thing, but when if that stereotypes made
other people feel hurt and discriminated then it should not be continued.

Then, how do we stop it?

One of the easiest things to do is probably to travel to somewhere that we’ve

never been to. By traveling, we would be exposed to something entirely new, something
that we never expected to. When we go somewhere new, we would have to adjust
ourselves towards the habit, manners and culture of that place. There’s an old
Indonesian quotes stated that “Dimana bumi dipijak disitu langit dijunjung” which
pretty much means that we have to accept and learn about the rules of the ground that
we’re currently standing on.

Traveling will give us new knowledge and point of view of something. When
we travel to the cities or province where the stereotyped ethnics live that I stated
previously, for example, we would learn new knowledge about them. We would
probably interact with them, find new facts and information about them that we never
know before. By exposed to those new facts, we probably would find how some
stereotypes are not entirely true, and we should not judge them before we really know or
interact with them. Therefore, it can be said that traveling will raise our tolerance
awareness towards something that different from us, which is a good thing.

Traveling does not have to be far though, but in my opinion, the farther we
travel, the more worth it our experience will be.

The effects of traveling towards society’s open-mindedness

As an individual, we would somehow find our own comfort zone in our life.
Comfort zone is a psychological state where things feel familiar to a person and they
feel at ease, in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and
stress (Alasdair, 2009). Meanwhile, Alina, as quoted from Tiptoeing Out of One's
Comfort Zone (and of Course, Back In), stated that a comfort zone is a state where we
believe we have enough access to love, food, time, admiration, and when we feel that
we have some control.

In short, comfort zone is a state when we feel comfortable at the most. Comfort
zone can also be an environment with the people that we familiar and comfortable with.
This environment, unconsciously, will affect our behavior and the way we think of
something. Thus, people will always have different interpretation of something that is
unusual, especially with something that doesn’t fit their way of thinking and something
that different from them.

When we travel, it means we are ready to leave this comfort zone.

We have to leave our little bubble of comfort zone, our own society, to meet
new society that different from us. We do not know what we would face in our
destination, we do not know much about the people who lived there, but we have to deal
with it later, ready or not.

Iyer, as quoted from Why We Travel, (2013) shared the experience of traveling
to North Korea.

You really do feel as if you've landed on a different planet -- and the North Koreans
doubtless feel that they're being visited by an extra-terrestrial, too (or else they simply
assume that you, as they do, receive orders every morning from the Central Committee
on what clothes to wear and what route to use when walking to work, and you, as they
do, have loudspeakers in your bedroom broadcasting propaganda every morning at
dawn, and you, as they do, have your radios fixed so as to receive only a single
channel).

Well, imagine how it feels like to be there, where everything would be

controlled by political and urgencies as if living between life and death. And we would
realize how free we are being able to be there, how we as an Indonesian can freely
commenting right on the government’s or political figure’s face without rules
whatsoever.

When we travel to somewhere new, we would simply leave our own judgments
and certainties at home. We would see everything in a different light, different
perspective and different rules from what we have at home.

Another thing that we would face when we travel somewhere new is probably
the language barriers. A recent study conducted by Dewaele and Wei (2013) as quoted
from Rajan’s International Journal of Arts and Humanities (2017) on multilingualism,
indicated that a higher level of proficiency in languages was linked to higher tolerance
of ambiguity. Individuals thus would become more tolerant to uncertainty when they
were exposed to more languages.

Hence, learning new language would make us to familiarize ourselves with new
culture. The more we learn and fluent on that language, the more respect we would gain
towards their culture.
 In essence, by leaving our comfort zone, exposing to new ideologies and
learning new language would lead us to accept and learn about other people’s culture.
When we get to this point of accepting one’s culture, our stereotypes and beliefs of that
culture will decrease, replaced by new knowledge that we gained from our traveling
experiences. Thus, that knowledge and experiences would make us to open our minds.
We would still have our own values and beliefs, but we will see things from multiple
and different perspectives from the experiences that we had after traveling.

Going to different places means that we would recognize how there are so many
people who doing things in a far different way from us, and it is totally okay. There is
nothing wrong from that. Traveling is an acceptance process to spell such foreign words
that we’ve never said before and to meet a totally foreign cultures that felt strangely
magnificent. From traveling, we would realize how we are just a tiny little dust in this
huge, multicultural universe, and who are we to judge others?

At the end of the day, traveling will make us to avoid negative judgments
towards others. We would learn to tolerate and appreciate things that different from us.
Imagine if everything in this world are all similar, how boring that would be?

Traveling will open our minds and let us know that diversity is beautiful.
 REFERENCES

Cardwell, Mike (1999). Dictionary of psychology. Chicago Fotzroy Dearborn. ISBN

1579580645

Iyer, Pico (2013). Why We Travel. Publications articles.

https://www.wheretherebedragons.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Why-We-
Travel.pdf

Phuong, Nguyen (2015). Potential Problems In Crosscultural Communications:

Stereotypes, Prejudices, And Racism. CCA course (HvA) 2015-2016

Rajan, Santosh (2017). Cultural Tolerance And Its Link With Languages in International
Journal of Arts and Humanities Volume: 01, Issue: 01. Research Gate
Publication.

Tugend, Alina (2011) Tiptoeing Out of One's Comfort Zone (and of Course, Back In).
The New York Times, pg. B6

White, Alasdair (2009). From Comfort Zone to Performance Management. White &
Maclean Publishing.