I see people

I've been asked - "Why do you say you're an ethnologist? Why do you see it as a part of your identity when it is not your occupation"?

I conclude that people really are the most fascinating inhabitants of the known world, more incomprehensible and diverse than all the wonders and terrors of the nature. I keep saying I am an introvert - and I am - I am not seeking interaction, I am mostly frightened to interact; but I am obsessively into observing people. 

Mesmerizing and blinding world; when I open my eyelids and mind wide enough; when I am at peace, freed from judgment, bitterness, mock - and it happens too, unwillingly - then I am able to see how all the human creations - obsidian knives as much as atomic energy; house made of clay as much as religion, charity as much as murder, hunting as much as eating disorder, money as much as heroism, oral tradition as much as mental illness - how all these creations are brilliant or terrifying constructions, evolved yet fragile buildings that we use to overcome us being ephemeral, temporary, us being a nature's nonsense. 

Through all our differences, synchronic and diachronic, through all our endless conflicts and clashes, in our disgust with untouchability - we are the same, significantly similar, always with the same needs and yearnings, always with the same soft, wavering bodies and minds. Like snails, without our cultures we'd crawl and slime, so we're attached to them so firmly, unaware of all the cracks, collisions and ambiguities of them; so we keep praising uniqueness against oneness. I am often defeated by the fact of my similarity with something I find hideous; that's why it'd be a good thing to contemplate about it more.

I guess that is why I am an ethnologist, or better to say - a social anthropologist - not because of some new age fancy glow but to underline what is utterly human against (or in spite, or because of) what may be a part of our group identity, difference. There is no gap between "a primitive" and "civilized" mind, there aren't good and evil nations, soil and blood - blood is the same and makes us equally vulnerable.

That is why I am an anthropologist - I see people everywhere.


 photo: http://www.monitor.bg/media/articles/2016/21/34417/%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%81.jpg