Out of the West

I have realized that for the first time in my life my education is not revolving around the West. Even at my univeristy in Chicago, my political science classes hugely revolved around American politics and cities and Western philosophies. Also, all my textbooks were written and my lectures were presented by people with Western mindsets.

I will remind you that the five classes I am taking this semester are Middle East Politics, Eastern Religions, Karabagh Conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, New Testament and Politics of East Asia since 1945. This is really a breath of fresh air for me. In my opinion, the students here have a much better knowledge of world history and geography. I think American students are taught the same basic version of world and U.S. history over and over again and I am realizing that the account of world history that I have learned is really inadequate. People here know about all sorts of things that I haven't even heard of and I am constantly looking these things up on Wikipedia so that I don't feel stupid when they are brought up in class.

Another thing that is different about university here is that I DON'T HAVE TO BUY BOOKS! The teachers know that most students can't afford them and that they have the means to photocopy them so I pay like $10 for a photocopy of a book that might cost $140 in U.S. This is definately the way it should be...there are just less rules and laws in general and everything still works. Of course, it isn't great and there are a lot of things that could be better, just like anywhere. I feel that I have only been confronted with two extremes. The U.S. is SO rigid. You get in trouble for everything. Here, people can't believe that it's against the law to smoke in front of the entrance to a building in Chicago or that there are tickets given for littering and that I can't park my car in front of my own house at night. The U.S. is so excessive in controlling the mundane everyday aspects of peoples' lives which is interesting because we also have the old cowboy mentality of rugged individualism and of course, the free market system.

However, I recognize that in Lebanon, there also exists an extreme. It is common for me to see people driving around with babies and little kids sitting in the front seat on their mom's lap. There is A LOT of garbage in the water and people frequently just throw their garbage out the car window onto the street. I know that these are largely cultural matters in addition to legal matters and in different countries there exist different ideas about what is good or bad and dangerous or not dangerous.