Together we are around 150 students from 40+ different countries, all working in some way towards peace, higher education, and global understanding and we make up the UN mandated University for Peace.

Before being a student here I used to wonder what the hell the UN did, and why they could never seem to come to a consensus or take a stand against a pressing issue or current event. After being in a classroom, sometimes with 10 people from 10 different countries, I have some level of understanding of how difficult it is to cross cultural lines to reach a mutual understanding, let alone an agreement.

That being said… how often do we actually take the time to listen to people we are interacting with, with an intention to understand them? I’ve noticed when their first language isn’t the same as yours, you will try a lot harder.

We praise our differences in appearance and individuality while we criticize and deeply judge people whose thought processes are slightly different from our own. Even when we have the same fundamental beliefs, if we express them in distinctly different ways we are automatically annoyed and the argument is unworthy of attempting to understand.

In general, when we communicate with other people who are  similar, it is easier to be overly critical and judgmental. In the United States, I would say it is even considered normal to continually “talk shit”, and criticize each other  or work to prove each other wrong. Even people who are so called “friends”.

The tables are quite turned when we interact with peers from other countries, particularly countries that seem most different from our own.  When someone looks so different from us, we excuse their cultural and differences as well. When we are in places where we think people are similar to us, we judge them for the slightest mishap, or using the waste basket instead of the recycling bin. Although I may look similar to my other from Europe or North America, I often don’t agree with the majority of my own country…

The point is, when people are different from us, we make an extended effort to give them the benefit of the doubt. We forgive them. We don’t go out of our way to make them feel wrong or ashamed. Across language barriers we work hard at understanding what the other person is trying to say with the words that they are choosing to use.

When we interact with someone similar to us, we jump to conclusions, we become mean. Evil.

Imagine if we would assume that each person we meet is from another planet so far way from our own, whose cosmology and ideologies are so unknown, that when we are in conversation, we actually try to deeply understand each other.

I don’t think this is so far from the truth.