TABOO!

Every Culture Gives Visitors a Pass…to a Point.

Perfectly acceptable…in Papua New Guinea.

I’ve always been an optimist. That’s probably not a wise thing, but hey, that’s me, part of my DNA, and I make it work for me, most of the time. Like the Indian idea that, no matter the problem, it will always work out in the end, so if it’s not working out now, well, it’s just not yet the end. My experiences with cultures around the world tend to confirm my perspective, and while that might just be the result of my seeing the world through my rose-colored glasses, I do think that there is something inherently beneficent about human nature, that our better angels, in the end, though sometimes just barely, will always outwit our Darth Vader tendencies.

Take, for example, the phenomenon of the cultural “pass”: that free get-out-of-jail card that most societies give out to visitors when they first arrive in their culture. There’s usually a time limit on it, but for a unique, sometimes short period, a visitor’s cultural ignorance is usually excused, met with a smile (and sometimes a gentle correction), overlooked, or forgiven. It is never, of course, unseen, but judgment is withheld until the visitor either leaves, or learns over time, the error of their ways. The upside of the cultural pass is that the visitor is spared the embarrassment of their ignorance, and the host doesn’t have to put in extra energy educating them. The…