Ignorance Or Just A Misunderstanding?

When we read Crystyna's blog today I had that part of the book stuck in my head. Voltaire wrote: "They found the cries came from two naked girls who were tripping along the edge of the meadow, while two monkeys followed the nibbling their buttocks"(69), after that part what I really did not agree with was when she wrote: "She turned her mouth up in a scowl"(honesty of truth). I personally thought that the phrase was not a very PG thing, but we can't judge it in that way. I know that was not her point but we are underestimating the time in which this was written. 

The perspective of the Americas was quite different from what it is now. In that time people did not think the United States is one of the strongest nations in the world or that Colombia has a president who is trying to become a dictator in a democratic way. They hardly even understood what was going on in the Americas. Not everyone had the chance to go there, and if they did have it it was for governmental reasons. Let me remind you that in the point where Candide found "the naked ladies" he was traveling through uncivilized territory. Does it ring a bell? Well they did not understand that there were certain behaviors that were different from the European society. Writers like Voltaire, that had never set foot in the new world, actually imagined how it would be to meet with Indians or with parts that were not influenced by Europe. They did not have reliable resources to write a perfect description of what they saw. Their resources were tales from sailors who thought that what they were seeing was the most primitive, uncivilized, pervert thing in the world. When evidently it was not. If you once in your life consider reading, Decadas de Orbe Novo of Pedro Martir de Angleria, you will understand that in that time people expected to understand what was going on through some writers that based their works without actually living the event. It was sort of a Historical novel, the writer did not live what was going on but he assumed it was like that. The cultural background of that time was created by assumptions.

A side from the fact that this was a satyrical phrase, it also shows us the closed mind people on this time had. How their judgment was so radical that it created perversion on things that were hardly understood. 

Ignorance always leads to misunderstandings.