I am posting another blog about Interdisciplinarity still on the science and nature chapter. Again, I did read this before class but didn’t understand until we talked about it in class, so I think it’s really wonderful that we did talk about it. The section about travel writing really stuck in my head because I never really thought about travel writing. I didn’t think this genre, or in the book it quoted ‘in between genre’ had much value.
As I read I found myself completely agreeing with Moran. You can’t be of a different culture and then decide to go to another place with different life ideals and expect to be completely unbiased. As a person raised with certain ideals, you project them in everything you do. As an American I eat everything with a fork while people in some Asians cultures might use chop sticks. Heck, some cultures don’t even use silverware! That would be a culture shock. I don’t believe it’s fair to country that you are writing about to have to endure your cultural prejudice. I believe the only way to successfully write about a culture without slandering it would be to have zero culture whatsoever. You don’t know what’s wrong or right and you would just record what you see.
I would never say that I wasn’t a judgmental person because when you think of it through this lenses, everyone ever is. It’s all about what is your average norm and what is not norm. If something is different in your life, you would notice it. I am not trying to dispute the importance or brilliance of travel writing because it could be the closest thing one could get to exploring certain cultures and religions. Yet, with this analytical view in my head, I don’t think we should take any travel writing as hard cold facts. Culture is different for everyone, people in every culture are different from one another.