Culture Vultures – We Are Where We Eat?

This week my travels have me back in the Philippines, a place that I truly adore and am only too happy to return to, with frequency. Regardless of where you go in Manila you may very well experience every shade of the social greyscale and cross between historical to uber-modernisation but, despite being one of the most populated cities in the world, as soon as you step off your plane it is a place that resonates kindness, courtesy and hospitality at its most genuine, without being subservient.

I find Manila a humbling experience for this very reason that the same hospitable behaviour is not one that can be guaranteed in so many other cities across the world. But as I consider how so many people leave one country to build a life in another, or to travel and tour new places, I wonder…. how much of our behaviour is really to do with our heritage, or are our core values and behaviour, in fact, actually influenced by our surroundings?

Travelling near or far, I meet and build friendships with so many people that are orginally from other countries and are now living in another and, as I understand their past and present I wonder ....does our DNA define who we are and how we treat others, or are we conditioned by what goes on around us and where we decide to live?

For example, can the kindness and caring nature that I so applaud in Manila survive the busy pace of London or New York, or does western city living smother this characteristic warmth and desire to help others, to replace it with a coldness for self-survival and a blinkered and introspective single-vision?

Does a travelling hub like New York exude a service mentality only because of the transience of so many other cultures that walk its streets every day, or does everyone really wish that everyone else has a nice day?

Is there perhaps a reason why there is always an Irish Bar on the corner of every major city, busy every night, celebrating a carefree top o’the morning, or is it that everywhere needs an escapism for some luck of the Irish?

In today’s world of fast paced living and cross-border travelling it is questionnable if multi-culturalism is even possible, or is it in fact at risk of becoming de-culturised as we advocate a lifestyle and behaviour based on where we decide to live versus being home-grown and true to what we know from our roots and where we were born? Is it really a case that we are what we eat, or more true that we are where we eat…?

 ‘Til next time, Pandora