Our Lonely Western World

I'm often surprised by the places I will find beautiful things... I found this excerpt of writing in my anthropology textbook in a section about reverse culture shock. It's written by a cultural anthropologist, Alan Beals (1980) upon returning home to San Francisco after a year of fieldwork in a village in India.

We could not understand why people were so distant and hard to reach, or why they talked and moved so quickly. We were a little frightened at the sight of so many white faces and we could not understand why no one stared at us, brushed against us, or admired our baby.

We could not understand the gabble of voices on the television set. When we could understand people, they seemed to be telling lies. The trust and warmth seemed to have gone out of life to be replaced by coldness and inhumanity. People seemed to have no contact with reality. All of the natural human processes--eating, sleeping together, quarreling, even playing--seemed to be divorced from earth and flesh. Nowhere could we hear the soft lowing of cattle or the distant piping of the shepherd boy.