Jumping to Conclusions: Bad Exercise
Sometimes we jump to unwarranted conclusions. It was Friday, July 31, 1987, when I heard the news headline on Brazilian radio. “A major tornado has hit a provincial capital in southern Canada.” I listened carefully, expecting to hear about Toronto, Ontario, which is on the same latitude as South Dakota. Imagine my surprise when the announcer said, “Edmonton, a city in southern Canada, suffered major damage with twenty fatalities.”
Edmonton, Alberta? Canada’s northernmost provincial capital? The gateway to the North? With its long, cold winters, how is it in southern Canada? My wife and I looked at each other and shook our heads, as much in dismay over the grief caused by the tornado as over the reporter’s ignorance.
But, later, I realized I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. When looking at a map of Canada, I understood why the reporter considered Edmonton to be in southern Canada. That’s because it is! It is well over 2,500 km from Canada’s northern boundary and only 500 km from the southern border. It’s not just in the southern fifty percent of Canada; it’s in the southern fifteen percent!
Eli‘s Worldview Versus Hannah’s Reality
I recently thought of that long-ago incident when I read the story in 1 Samuel 1 of Eli, the priest seeing Hannah, the childless woman, moving her lips but not uttering a sound. He glanced at her and knew he’d seen that behaviour before. So he rebuked her for being drunk. Wrong! She was anything but drunk. She was fervently praying for a child.
Eli’s worldview led him to the wrong conclusion. The reporter correctly saw Edmonton as a provincial capital located in southern Canada. In contrast, Edmontonians see themselves as living in the farthest north provincial capital, ignoring that five times as much Canadian territory is north of Edmonton, including Whitehorse, a provincial capital of 30,000 people. How we jump to conclusions!
People tend to misinterpret actions by others who have a different worldview. It happens between adults and children, immigrants and long-time residents, retired seniors and college students, international travellers and local residents, and between the haves and the have-nots in our society.
Topless Canela Women
One day, a cargo truck stopped in the Canela village on its way to a Brazilian settlement. Six young Brazilian men, catching a ride on the truck, had never been in the Canela village before. When they saw the Canela women and girls were bare-breasted, they jumped to the false conclusion that this was a village of loose women and began to behave accordingly. Taking off their shirts and smirking lewdly into each other’s cameras, they draped their arms over the shoulders of half-naked Canela women. As Brazilians, they came from a hyper-sexed society, which, like our North American culture, views breasts as sex objects, while to Canelas, breasts were baby-feeding organs.
Canela Banking System
When we started our twenty-plus years of living among the Canela, it seemed like we were surrounded by beggars since our neighbours kept asking us for things. Only after we understood the culture more thoroughly did we realize they were not beggars at all. They were practicing a centuries-old credit-based trading system. When a hunter brought home fifty pounds of deer meat, he would have plenty left after feeding his family. With neither salt nor refrigeration, he had no way to preserve it. So, when neighbours came and asked for some meat, he would gladly give it, knowing he was building up credit with them to cash in the next time they had excess food, or he needed their help in his field. No paper, no IOUs—the village-wide credit and debit system was based on mutual understanding and family memory.
So What?
The next time we see someone do something that strikes us as odd or unusual, we should probably ask ourselves, “Is this person of a different age, culture, race, gender or nationality?” If so, we must recognize that this “odd” action may be perfectly acceptable in the other person’s worldview.
Exercise is good for us, but not when we jump to the wrong conclusion. That just shows our ignorance.