Cannibal Tours

          Cannibal Tours, a documentary made in 1988 by Dennis O'Rouke, was painful to watch.  It shows how wrong our view is of what we consider to be "primitive" people.  Also, we see one of the problems when an ideology is forced on them, destroying certain aspects of the people's lives.  While I am personally a Christian, I do not condone the eradication of an ideology and the objects that go with it.  As a human being, who am I to come in and say that my way is the only way and that all other things must be destroyed?  While I do believe that my faith is the only true faith, I will not discuss that here as it is not pertinent to this post.
          Watching the local people's reaction to the tourists, you can see that they really don't like it.  The best examples I saw were the interview with older woman who said, "Why do they have all the money and we don't?" and also the one man who as being interviewed and the elderly lady stepped into to frame to take a picture of the guy.  His facial expression was that of disgust, and I agree with him.  For them, this seems to be the only way for them to earn money so they can by "first-price" items in town.  The only problem is that the tourists, who can easily pay the first-price haggle for a second-price or a third-price.  As the one guy said, "We can't by first-price items with second-price money."
          Ethnocentrism is something I see running rampant here in the USA.  We believe that our way of life is the best way, when in reality, it is not.  We go in to places with stable societies that have existed for thousands of years and proclaim that our way is more modern and better.  I think of China, whose dynastic history goes back around 5,000 years.  Of course, communism, which took control of China in 1947, is not a good form of government, but the US has only been around for about 240 years, when China's existence is 21 times that!  If we began to educated our children how to identify and avoid ethnocentric thoughts and ideas, they would have a much more balanced view of the world.