America is one of the countries on the earth that loves to dictate world policy. The fact that our economy and military strength gives us the ability to put teeth into our demands leads us to believe that we know best. We, as a country, can't understand why we are hated when we seem to be bringing "light" to "dark" parts of the world. I think I can tell you why.
My family and I recently spent a little over a week in an Asian country. It doesn't matter which one because that part of the world is so different. There, they look back on thousands of years of history. It is not uncommon to see temples and other things that are thousands of years old next to modern buildings and... slums. These ancient places are still in use and are a major influence on those who live with them. The perspective of life is markedly different from what we, as Americans, understand about the world. Here, it is unusual to find buildings that are more than a few hundred years old. That changes how we see the world.
I am a handicapped person. One of the things I learned is that I am almost completely dependent on the American way of living. I am almost completely incontinent. I did not realize, until I had my first accident in the country we visited, that I have designed my life around the bathrooms I know exist in every public building. I also know that they are all places that I can sit to go to the bathroom. In many Asian countries, the bathrooms are holes in the ground (with porcelain and plumbing). They are considered more clean. If you think about it, in some ways they are. However, you have to be very strong to be able to use one. Bathrooms are also relatively scarce compared to what we take for granted here. They have learned to live with the situation.
The point is, how can we communicate with people who see the world so differently in their every day lives. Their cities are thousands of years old. Addressing plumbing and transportation problems is an incredible and, often, insurmountable challenge. They can't do what we did in our history... move west and start from scratch. They have millions of people to consider, and resources and the equitable distribution of those resources is even more of a problem in societies where lineage often can be traced back hundreds if not thousands of years.
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