In 1997 my family and I moved from suburban Australia to live on a remote island in the Pacific for nearly ten years. There were some pretty big cultural shocks.
This was standard footwear for the kids in our village:
This was the interior of the church I pastored:
This was a typical family standing in front of a typical house:
This was breakfast for the the oldest person in my congregation:
This was a communal meal after church:
And so on, and so on. We were easily the richest people living on that whole ridge, by several orders of magnitude. We owned this automotive icon:
And we lived in this mansion:
There were, of course, many cultural shocks for us, as we adjusted to living in this very different place. But to answer the original question - which was the biggest?
It came on a visit back to Australia, after having lived on this island for several years. We landed at the airport in Brisbane, and walked through corridors lined with advertising for products like this:
After which we had to walk through a duty-free section to get to baggage claim, like this:
We were picked up at the airport by a family member and got on the motorway, where there was sign after sign like this:
When we arrived at their home, where we were staying, there was stuff on the coffee table like this:
We turned on the TV, and saw ad after ad like this:
We got through the evening, and went to bed, and my wife and I turned to each other, and I said: Did all that hit you as hard as it hit me? And she said: Yes!!!, she knew exactly what I was talking about!
From the moment we’d arrived, we’d been subjected to an almost unceasing stream of messages saying, buy this, buy this, you need this, you want this, this is what you’ve got to have, this is what is missing from your life - and ALL of it was unimaginable luxury compared to the village we’d walked out of that morning!
One of those Rolex’s would probably pay for a water tank for the village. A single product display in that duty free shop would probably pay for school fees for the whole village. The idea of spending that much money on the advertising itself, let alone actually purchasing the products being advertised, seemed almost obscene to us. Most of all, the idea that people could think that this was normal - that of course these were the things that ordinary people should aspire to and work for, that of course this is what life is all about, that of course what really matters is just getting more, more, more useless luxury stuff - that crass materialism appeared so pointless and self-centred and ugly in that moment.
In a life where I’ve experienced many culture shocks, that was easily the biggest. We’ve been back in Australia for 14 years now, and one of the saddest things for us is how easily we find ourselves slipping back into thinking the same way about things ourselves. We’re not immune from crass materialism. But we do know, deep down, that it’s not normal. This life we live in the West is not the norm for most; for the greater part of the world’s population, it’s luxury beyond their wildest dreams. They’re the normal ones. We’re the wierdos.
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