Being An Outsider Analysis

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In the world of today, people of different ethnicities, cultures, and groups, such as religion, live in the same communities more often times than not. Although they are technically an association, there still tends to be a “black sheep”, or in other words, an outcast among the group. These unlucky or perhaps lucky, depending on the point of view, individuals are then alienated either in a positive or negative way. On one hand there exist a variety of people that believe being an outsider is only experienced by a select few. On the other hand some argue that everyone at one point or another is isolated from the rest of society. However, the fact that there lives so many distinct individual’s tends to make people favor only one of the claims. The experience of being an outsider is undoubtedly universal due to people belonging to different groups, having distinct personalities as well …show more content…

Ryszard Kapuscinski portrays this idea with the talk of culture in his lecture “Encountering the Other: The Challenge for the 21st Century”. One main idea in the lecture is the concept of new cultures known as “the others” and how different people react to them. Kapuscinski even goes as far as to say that there is no superiority among cultures, “ For him, a different person, of a different race and culture, is nevertheless a person whose behavior, like ours, is characterized by dignity, respect for acknowledged values, and respect for tradition and customs” (Kapuscinski 238). This shows that outsiders are not those who are inferior, those who have different beliefs, or practices. Whether people share or belong to different groups there is bound to be one or more people that disagree with the ideas it is just human nature. This further proves that everyone not just certain individuals deal with being an outsider because not everyone thinks

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