Cultural Collision

Do you know a song called "Collide" by Howie Day? Well withour getting too off topic, this song is about two different kinds of people and how because of these differences, they do not belong together or go together. How does this relate to Peace Child? Well you may have noticed that the Sawi and the westerners are the same kind of people but are totally different in culture and spend lives in distinct atmospheres. In a western viewpoint, what the Sawi do and how they live may be absurd or grotesque but we need to understand that it is the same or at least similar to the eyes of the Sawi. In one word we call these characteristics and traits of different kinds of people; culture. Culture is something that one country enherits or develops where people in the nation start to follow until it becomes an independent tradition. Every person carries one or more of these cultural traits depending on one's birth and how they were raised. In the book, the Sawi have traditions and commandments, while Don Richardson and his wife, who were both born to the western culture have their own unique culture. What this comes across is that culture can not be judged as correct or incorrect. No matter how different a culture may be we westerners especially need to accept the fact that they (as in the Sawi) do not follow violent or morally wrong behaviors without a purpuse, but instead do it because that is how they were taught and grew up to be. Cultural collision is inevitable, but the fact that this is becoming a reason to be descrimative or condescending is avoidable.