Life Beyond the Garden Wall

Imagine that you have lived all your life in a large house surrounded by a huge garden. A large wall surrounds the garden and is so high that you cannot see over it. You have never been outside the wall.
Everything that you want is in the house, like good food, fine clothes and games to play. There are lots of young, healthy people to spend time with. There is, however, no way of finding out about what goes on in the world beyond the garden wall. There is no television, internet or radio and you never see newspapers. You think that everyone in the world must live a life like yours. As you get older though, you begin to wonder what life might be like beyond the wall. One day you climb over it.

Think of at least four things that you might see in the world beyond the wall that would make you stop, think and be aware that life is not just about your own pleasure.

The above exercise is aimed at primary school children but as soon as I read it, I thought there are a lot of adults suffering from ignorance and an inability to see beyond their own reality especially on this site. The amount of prejudice and discrimination I see due to a lack of understanding and a particular nation which I will leave unnamed which seems to have a high proportion of people (by no means a majority) who haven't ever left the country yet still passes judgement on others regardless stuns me.

If you are one of these people, stop to think for a moment... you are a global citizen and the first most important step in improving the future for ourselves and our children is to understand the differences between us.

Have you left the boundary of the garden wall? If not, what is stopping you? Why are you afraid? I know it may sound slightly patronising but seriously, feel free to offer ideas of what you might see or achieve when you finally get over the wall.

Good exercise.
I felt very much this way when I got my passport. All I knew about the rest of the world was only like..the spice girls and such were british..and french people made good wine..also stuff like pyramids were in egypt, and a few other very elementary style trivia.

What a very wild wake up call when you start traveling around. I was at first almost stunned at people and how I was lead to believe that as an American, people would almost want to pay me a dollar just to touch me and my coolness (after all, coming from the greatest country on earth, according to our politicians, and going to these strange lands where they all want to be like me...) They didn't see me as super special at all..and frankly, thought I was at times arrogant..subconsciously or not.

As far as what 4 things I noticed most...well, hard to say really. Going to say, England is very different than going to Cairo. I will say though that when I stepped out of my country, Wherever I wen't, the average people didn't have as much as the average person did in the states, but they had more appreciation in what they did have...so, when you have a higher value for what you do have, you arguably have more than a person that does not value what they have, even if there is a lot more of it.

In some areas, what was most strange after being there for awhile was seeing familiar sites.
Seeing a McDonalds in Egypt gave me a weird thrill, because I appreciated it. Back home I pass by 3 on just one little road to the mall and have no feelings for it...that sort of thing.

But the most interesting thing was that, even though I got lots of culture shock almost everywhere I went, People were just people. The younger folks (say the under 50 crowd) enjoyed playing video games, having a drink (even if it was on the down low in areas where its forbidden to drink), drive fast, listen to good music, etc...the older ones grump about politics and the kids these days, etc...take away the backdrop and accents and you could be in anywheresville, USA. So, to come back home and hear people talking about the backwoods or weird people of here, there, etc...the slamming of France during the early 2000's, all of it really annoyed me...had any of these idiots went there and simply hung out in some local restaurants, they would see almost no difference in mindset anywhere..

When I read that it made me think that Adam and Eve were like some kind of anarchist's. Maybe they wanted to get thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Maybe they wanted to see what was outside. Maybe they didnt need god and his Nanny State. Maybe they decided to look after themselves and stopped being scared of the unknown. Maybe by eating the fruit they were saying "[SNIP] you god and your over-rated boring garden. We will be fine without you thanks". And maybe they were.

We should all do the same to our Godlike Governments.

reply to post by Germanicus


We would be much better off if we could break out in that way. I hadn't considered it like that.

It seems as though most people are more comfortable within their own walls judging by the amount of responses!

It reminds me of the movie "Being There," with Peter Sellers. A brilliant film, everybody should watch. Sellers plays a feeble-minded gardner who lives all his life as the gardner of a rich man. He has never been outside the wall of the garden. He has seen the outside world only on TV. When the rich man dies, Sellers must leave his house for the first time ever, and enter the real world. Here is the opening scene:
(warning: a little bad language)



Also reminded of the story of the Buddha, who lived as a child in such a garden and didn't learn of old age, disease, and death until he left as a young man.

reply to post by Germanicus


Fear is what keeps us down!

Good post and good connection, I like the idea.