I think the topic that was most interesting to me in our class discussion is how one tends to impose their own concepts on the other: one tend to view them as something from history (past) or something else that is current and one is familiar with. We saw this in Russell’s second book, especially in Sofia’s character who, in agreement with Jen, I didn’t like much. Over all like most, I preferred The Sparrow, and in large part that is due to the characters there. I thought The Sparrow had more interesting characters and better humor. Also in agreement with a number of people in class I believe her attempting to resolve the religious dilemma she left us with in the first book was unnecessary. I enjoyed reading about the other side of the story for example Supaari’s point of view in his interaction with the foreigners during the first mission, but the turn her theme took with religion left me unhappy. I had a few moments of “you got to be kidding me” in this book…especially when Isaac sounded like God’s messenger bringing God’s music and Emilio’s reaction. I don’t know why but I have developed something that I can almost call aversion to organized religion in the past few years, so reading about people who blindly give themselves to faith is a little disturbing to me, so Emilio again starting to lean towards that mindset really disturbed me (I am not saying he embraced God again, but there was still some small references to him coming to terms with religion and God). I guess the most I took away from this book is the cultural interaction aspect of it, and the damage something foreign can do to a system. We see this in Sparrow with radical change in Runa behavior due to the foreigners and in large part Sofia. And we see this in Todorov with the arrival of the Spaniards. This makes me wonder if it is possible for someone to arrive into a different cultural setting and be strictly an observer and not impact that culture, or be a catalyst for radical change. Personally, I think it is impossible, so then the question is what can one do to minimize the affect they have on society because as we have seen, more often than not many latent and negative affects arise even if the intentions are good. So I guess the big question that was in my mind at the end of the class was what is it that makes a foreign entity such a big catalyst? And does anyone have the right to impose their own values on another culture and try and change it, and if yes in which cases is it ok and in which cases is it not?
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"tends to impose their own concepts on the other"
As I pint out in my post we don't actually impose humanness on the other. It's very often that we don't perceive the other to have the same "unnatural" existence we do.
I agree that it is impossible to be strictly an observer. We could try to assign observations to a computer or outside source, but even then we would have to program it and impose our views on what is worth observing and analyzing. I don't think there is much we can do to minimalize the effects of foreign contact because how are we to know. The safest course of action seems to be to not introduce anything new, which is very difficult in a situation like landing on Rakhat. In response to your last question, I'd like to believe that nobody has the right to impose their own values on another culture (or each other for that matter). But I'm sure there are examples, that I can't think of, which I would agree to imposing values. I guess my problem with it is the word imposing. I wouldn't mind if the other culture accepted and adopted values, even if it meant wiping out its own.
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