In today’s increasingly globalized and connected world, it may seem like physical and cultural distances between people are shrinking all the time. With the prevalence of international travel, immigration, and technology bringing the entire world online, common assumptions are that knowledge and understanding of other cultures is expanding rapidly.
However, this surface-level impression of greater connection can often mask deeper ongoing gaps in cross-cultural awareness and empathy. While technologies like social media, video calls and online translations have certainly improved our ability to learn basic facts about other societies, they have not necessarily led to true understanding of differences in everyday life experiences and cultural mindsets.
Our lived experiences and common sense perspectives become deeply ingrained from a young age based on where we grow up. Further, preexisting knowledge gained beforehand shapes these localized frames of reference. It is easy to assume our inherently subjective mindsets apply universally due to this combination of upbringing and preconceptions. When encountering others with divergent environments, we fail to recognize differences in formative experiences. This underscores the need for empathy in an interconnected world - the ability to understand life beyond our own perspective amid varied realities.