Criticism
Sihanoukville, Cambodia, December 12th, 2014.
Salaroche


There are subjects that you just cannot help but to express your opinion about them. We all have our own psychological-emotional buttons that, when pressed, trigger in ourselves reactions of different intensity depending on how close the subject in question is to our hearts and minds.

Subjects pertaining to nationalism, ethnicity, religion, the welfare state, immigration, law enforcement, trickledown economics, same-sex marriage, etc., can often be like matches just waiting to be stricken against opposing opinions in order to flare up into heated discussions and even into friendship-breaking emotional disagreements.

The town of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and its neighboring beaches, where I’ve been living for the past four months or so, are the destination of many a tourist from a host of different countries. This makes it that, during my stay, I have been exposed to a fairly wide variety of ways of thinking (read perceptions of the world) that interpret the most important issues of the day (i.e., the Ukraine, ISIS, the CIA report, US police brutality, etc.,) in different ways.

I’ve talked to Germans who visibly celebrate Gerhard Schroeder’s hugging Putin in St. Petersburg last April, Scots and Australians who have an abusive view of America, Americans who irreflexively hate the French, French who have a demeaning view of Russians, Norwegians who dislike all dark-skinned people, Swede women who automatically shun anything related to lesbians, Englishmen claiming superiority over anyone in Southeast Asia because of their physical traits... and so on.

Fortunately, however, that’s only one side of the coin. I’ve also talked to people of an equal or larger variety of nationalities who enjoy plurality of a few sorts. People who are not looking for scapegoats for the problems of the world, people who perhaps are aware of their own human nature in ways much deeper than those of many others, guys and girls willing to exchange ideas rather than impose their own on you or me, people whose identities aren’t founded on automatic rejection of most different others but on affirmation of the universality of human ideals... and so on. And, in all honesty, I prefer talking to people of this kind than to those of the other.

Am I a dreamer in exalting values that may bring people together instead of those that may set them apart? Am I out of touch with reality when thinking that the latter can someday be improved to the point when the former may take a clear upper hand? Maybe yes maybe not.

And the answer to those questions will certainly depend on the responder, as answers may vary according to the different psychological-emotional buttons that trigger the different reactions in each and everyone of us. For example, whether you criticize, praise, or are entirely indifferent to whatever is written on this website will depend largely on how firmly the issues contemplated there press your psycho-emotional buttons or on whether they press those buttons at all.

Your views on any question may differ from mine in a substantial manner, while agreeing or disagreeing with that of all others to a variety of extents. For better or worse, however, you and I will never be alone in such situations. Just as yours truly and most other travellers continue to corroborate over time, such is just the way life is on planet Earth.

And the beat goes on.

Salaroche