Cultural context can be difficult to grasp: there is a strange, closed-eyed mental leap one must take in order to discard personal experience and embrace that which seems fundamentally uncomfortable, living differently than you’ve been taught to live. Oftentimes, I see culture viewed as striving for different spots on a podium— the US is first, of course, because of our superior standard of living (e.g. a five-dollar foot-long sub and a top-of-the-line public education system), and may be followed by some European nations, perhaps Switzerland (they have nice mountains there and weren’t involved in WWII) or maybe jolly old England (after all, they did begat America). Russia and China are obviously several laps behind, because they’re communists, but still significantly ahead of a country like Liberia, where people are catching Ebola faster than medical personnel can keep track of.

This erroneously assumes that we’re all running in the same race…