finding purpose in our insignificant existence by OlivSUNia: The running example in this video is of riding a Japanese bus as a foreigner. Olivia discusses all of the tiny subtleties that, as a foreigner, one would notice, wonder what they mean, and then be faced with two options: either they research it or ignore it. If they go about researching the tiny details, they may have to get exposed to a different culture and thus begin seeing things differently than they did before.

They may notice that people sleep on the bus and then wonder why and why this isn’t the case in their home countries. They may realize that a ton of information and history that have created a common cultural experience – ranging from poverty to various forms of institutional violence – is condensed to “don’t, it’s dangerous!” Thus, less people sleep on public transport where they come from.

If they hadn’t been exposed to this different culture, they would have never thought about the possibility of sleeping in public and never even missed the opportunity to do so. They had been conditioned to a society in which they were simply not safe and so since they didn’t know otherwise, they couldn’t even begin to conceptualize an alternative.

And so based on this simple detail to which we assign value or meaning, our perspective shifts a little bit, just enough for us to see things for the first time that have always been there, but we just took for granted.