Name: Emmanuel Lokoyi Professor: Rochelle Rives Course: E101 Date: 10/24/2015

OUR SECOND NATURE
Generally, human beings believe they know how the planet ought to rotate, what speed it should rotate on, and where it should rotate to. We are so confident of ourselves that we seem to think to know the truth; we think we are the focal points of the Universe, and everything should revolve around us. It doesn’t matter if the world crashes down, as long as we are unscathed, human existence is not threatened. We are so certain that what we do, how we live, what we eat and what we say is normal and right that we fail to stop for a second to reason why and what is. These things we do have become our second nature, something David Foster Wallace describes as our DEFAULT-SETTINGS. Default-settings are the things we do but never question because we think it is how it is meant to be. It has become an unconscious way of life, like breathing or hearing, we think it is how it should be. They have been hard-wired into our subconscious that our minds are not even aware of them. Among several things, culture is a major default-setting in human beings. The environment we live in, the heritage we inherit, and the ways of life we grew up into has configured our minds to think in specific ways. These make us think that certain things are natural and normal. Anything, everything that opposes or differs from what we do or what we believe in is considered indecorous and improper. We think we are the most intelligent in the Universe, that nothing and no one is smarter, that we are masters of the Universe. Culture is a set of norms that set standards for a society of what is acceptable behavior. The way we live, what we wear, what we eat, the language we speak, how we speak are what make up our culture. We believe this heritage of ours is the right and proper way. Any other way is considered improper or obscene. Majority of us are so comfortable with our atmosphere and surroundings that we have refused to break out of our comfort zones. Every other culture is viewed as strange, abnormal, improper, and unacceptable. In America for example, if your accent, pronunciation or dressing differs from an American’s, a lot of people will tag you as strange, incorrect, or improper. According to Socrates in “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave”, Plato said, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images”, so have we failed to leave the shores of our minds to explore other possibilities, and this has clouded our judgments so badly that any other culture or tradition, though tolerated, is seen as weird and incorrect. In every culture, there are basic standards for social interaction such as personal space distance, eye contact, amount of body language displayed in public, negotiating style. In America for instance, we, considering I’m in America now, stand about eighteen inches apart when engaged in normal conversation; prefer very direct eye contact; are pretty demonstrative with body language and negotiate very directly always asking the other party for their “bottom line”. Anything that differs from these customs is always considered abnormal, regardless of the fact that in other cultures, they may stand closer or farther than we are comfortable, may view direct eye contact as rude, be more or less open to displaying body language, and negotiate more directly. For example, when I first came to America, I wanted to travel from Brooklyn to Manhattan. When I got into the subway to take the train, due to my naiveness, I wasn’t sure what platform I was supposed to be on to get the train going uptown, so I decided to ask a woman standing on the same platform I was, who was also waiting for the train. As soon as I moved closer to her to converse, she got startled. She held on to her bags firmly and started stepping away, looking at me suspiciously. I was surprised by her actions, but then I realized she wasn’t just comfortable with how close I was coming to her. I had to stop, smile at her, and literally assure her that I meant no harm whatsoever and that I just wanted to ask her for directions. This made me realize that Americans don’t really like a level of closeness from strangers. Unlike in other countries, where coming close doesn’t raise so much awareness. Same as eye contact, in Nigeria where I’m from, direct eye contact is considered rude and daring. Whenever I’m being spoken to by someone older than me, I was required to look to the ground, with my head bowed as a sign of respect. As opposed to here in the United States of America, where not having direct eye contact when having a conversation or when being spoken to is considered rude. In relation to Socrates’ reply to Glaucon in “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” when Socrates said “and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave”, our minds are limited only to what we grew up in, and what we were made to believe is right. Our mode of dressing, being also part of our culture, is a default-setting. The kind of fashion and way of dressing we grew into is believed to be the normal way we should dress. We believe if someone wears a kind of style that differs from what we wear; the person is either trying to attract attention or is mentally disabled. I was walking home from school one day and I saw a man dressed in native Scottish attire. I couldn’t stop looking at him because he was different. I had never seen a man wear skirts before, so he seemed strange. When I eventually came to my senses to focus on where I was headed, I realized I wasn’t the only person staring at the man. Other pedestrians, both young and old, were also gazing at him, with even more amusement than I was. I can actually imagine how embarrassed the man would’ve been because I have been on the receiving end before. It was on the day I went to my friend’s church. As normal to me, I wore my native outfit that I prefer to wear to church on Sundays. At first, it all seemed normal when I entered because only a few people saw me when I entered considering I got there pretty late and the front seats were taken, so I had to sit at the back. I didn’t have to handle the awkwardness of people stealing glances at me because I wore something different. The embarrassment waited till the service was over. Virtually everybody looked at me like I didn’t belong in the gathering. It felt like the walls around me should close on me and the ground should swallow me. In the corner I was, waiting for my friend who was dressed in suit like the rest of the congregation, I had hoped to avoid so much attention, but all my efforts to literally hide seemed futile because the church was so big and it was filled to the brim. I had to call my friend to meet me by our car because I couldn’t handle the embarrassment anymore. A monk from China dressed in his “chougu” robes, a Scot dressed in “kilt” skirts, a Nigerian dressed in “bubba and sokoto” attire are all viewed as abnormal or strange in America. As long as you are not wearing the generally accepted jean, shirt, or suit as a male, you are viewed as a kind of entertainment or pictured as a member of a circus. Just as David Foster Wallace noted in “This is Water” when he said “they’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you are doing, these customs of ours have become our second nature. Our culture is like water for fish. Literacy is the only medication to this genetic sickness. As “David Foster Wallace” and “Socrates” illustrated in their writings in books “This is Water” and “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” respectively, only if we are educated, only then are we going to rid ourselves of this trend. If only we could step out of our flesh, become selfless, and think from different perspectives, things will be a whole lot different. If only we could consider the fact that there are seven continents, each having numerous countries with different cultures and religions. If only we would realize that there are over seven billion people on this earth. If only we could open our canal minds to other possibilities, then, and only then would we be real masters of the Universe. -Emmanuel Lokoyi