When you travel, you get to experience a new society first hand. This helps you to make your own inferences about the place and people, rather than depending on the media to help you make that judgement.
It is fun and interesting to see how over the centuries a particular culture have shaped that society. Media sometimes have a very dramatic way of portraying foreign cultures. I am not just talking about western media’s portrayal of foreign cultures, but also eastern media dramatizes their portrayal of western society by highlighting the problems of these societies but not their strengths. Such one sided portrayal of foreign culture leads to a gap in understanding. In this globalized age, where people are traveling in large numbers or expats trying to make a living in other societies. It is important to bridge these gaps otherwise it will lead to fragmentation of the society.
At Culture Guru, hopefully we can strive to identify and highlight these gaps so people can make efforts in bridging them. Most of the time, identification of the problem is almost 50% solution.
(The above drawing is by my 4 year old daughter, and it is titled: Together we bloom. The message is that people of various colors come together to produce one blooming and happy society).