As a foreigner learning other’s language and culture, I once set my goal to really use the language a lot and to understand them. But I fall into one trap that I tried to understand them as an outsider, who knows another language and culture as backup and tries to understand object using mother language as a reference.
Now I feel that this approach to understanding as an outsider is not enough or even misleading because this is always our second option of living. I always have a god view so that I can never immerse myself into a new culture to really think as people in that culture. In other words, I never really put myself in their shoes.
Yeah, it is powerful enough to at least understand a different culture from an outsider’s view. But one step further, a lot more can be learnt if we become one of them by temporally immersing ourselves into that culture and totally forget about our origin, language and culture.
—Negentropist.Z
熵逆 