THE SUNGLASSES ANALOGY

Imagine that in your country, ever since, today and until the far future, every human being was, is and will be born with two legs, two arms, two eyes, a nose, a mouth and sunglasses. The colour of the sunglasses is yellow. Nobody has ever wondered about the existence of those sunglasses, because they have always been there and are body parts so to speak. Every human being is born with them. Take the yellow sunglasses off and look at them. What makes them yellow are all the values, attitudes, ideas, beliefs, and assumptions common to all Croatians.

Everything Croatians have ever learnt and experienced and will ever learn and experience has entered the brain through the yellow lenses of the sunglasses. Everything was filtered and interpreted by the values and ideas, which have coloured the lenses yellow. The yellow lenses of the sunglasses represent our attitudes, values and beliefs and represent our being Croatian.

Thousands of kilometres away in another country (e.g. Finland), ever since, today and until the far future, every human being was, is and will be born with two legs, two arms, two eyes, a nose, a mouth and sunglasses. The colour of the sunglasses is blue. Nobody has ever wondered about the existence of those sunglasses, because they have always been there and are body parts, so to speak. Every human being is born with them. Everything that the Fins see, learn and experience is filtered by the blue lenses of their sunglasses.

A traveller who wants to go to Finland is probably clever enough to realise that if he wants to learn more about Finland he has to buy Finish blue sunglasses, in order for him to truly “see” Finland. Upon arrival in Finland the traveller is now wearing blue Finish sunglasses, stays for two months and is convinced that he has learnt a lot about Finish attitudes, values and beliefs. He is truly “seeing” Finland by wearing Finish blue sunglasses. He returns to his home country and declares himself an expert on Finland and maintains that the culture of Finland is green.

What has happened? The traveller has not removed his own Croatian yellow filter. The moral of this story is: before we are open and free to learn about another culture (to wear their sunglasses) we have to take off our own sunglasses, to avoid the colouring and filtering of our interpretations of the new culture which we want to learn about by our own attitudes, values and beliefs. Our aim should not be to judge the other culture, but to learn something about it. We have to develop a double vision or in other words, the ability to perceive more than one side of an idea.

How can we take off the sunglasses? Very easily. By developing the ability to understand and describe the values, attitudes and beliefs and assumptions of our own Croatian culture the yellow colour of our lenses is fading and the blue colour of the other culture becomes more intense. The more we verbalize and truly understand, what it is that defines us as Croatians, the easier we can make the yellow filters lighter, so as to be able to put on the blue sunglasses and to see a more pure blue tone.

(Source: unknown)