Similarities in Differences

I find it very fascinating how much you can learn about someone by only having a simple conversation. I feel as if people don’t do that as often anymore because of all the stereotyping and assuming that occurs nowadays. But I think it’s very important to chat with others especially with different world perspectives and opinions. This is primarily what we talked about with Adiche’s “The Danger of a Single Story” and Michael Wesch’s “How to Stop Hating”. How people may think they have an open perspective on the world but in reality, that’s just not the case.

I decided to talk to someone who I haven’t really talked to much before, his name is Daniel Vakili. I thought it would be a good idea to have the conversation with him because he is different than I am. He’s middle eastern, and I think that could help me find new and better perspectives. But after talking for a little while I soon realized that we aren’t as different as I previously thought. When having the conversation, I realized that we have more in common than not in common, such as both our names are Daniel and after comparing our tastes in music, we found similarities. And after talking with him for a bit longer we found that we had similar senses of humor. I think this is very important because just in Adiche’s story with her American roommate. “She assumed I did not know how to use a stove”, this shows how despite coming from a different country doesn’t mean that we are completely different, Adiche’s roommate had a default point of view on her before even meeting her, because Adiche is from Africa, she automatically assumed she grew up dirt-poor without things like stoves. Questions like “If you could share a meal with any four individuals, living or dead, who would they be and why?” is very important for getting to know someone because it shows who they look up to and aspire to be. For example, Vakili wishes he can talk to people like Lebron James, Will Smith or Leonardo DaVinci because of all the great they did for the world and he aspires to be like them one day

In the video, “How to Stop Hating” by Michael Wesch, we talked about how ignorance and refusing to learn about the other side can have negative effects on people in the long term. Vakili has been a huge basketball fan since before he could remember. In our conversation he talked about his favorite players and teams and I didn’t really understand what he was talking about since I have always been more invested in soccer my whole life. But after our talk I decided to do some research on some basketball legends and I now find it very interesting. This parallels a lot with Wesch’s video because after deciding to find a new perspective on something we haven’t always felt we had an interest in, we can find new things about the world we love, “learning to love some musical genre you once hated is not going to solve the deep divides of our world, but it is a start. Love is not just something that just happens to you; it’s something you do; it’s a practice and you can get better at it.” That is a great quote by Michael Wesch that ties in with our converstation that we had.

So, at the end of the day, I learned that no matter who you are talking to, no matter their religion or cultural background there is always something you can both enjoy. This is the important first step to overcoming the single story.