Bridging Culture Lecture Series

PVCC students and faculty welcomed Ray Garman as the latest speaker in the Bridging Culture series.

A well establish entrepreneur, inventor, he holds a Guinness World Record, several technology patents, and is currently working on another book. However, Garman’s experience in post-conflict Vietnam and Cambodia was the subject of his lecture.

      In Vietnam, political turmoil erupted due to growing discontent, leading to the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945; decades of isolation followed.

According to Garman, in the 1970s, just as Vietnam was opening up to foreign interaction and trade, the Khmer Rouge slaughtered over two million Cambodians in a period now remembered as the Cambodian Genocide.

In detailing his experiences in the region, formerly Garman realized that using the threat of violence to encourage a predicted reaction in people is not always effective.

He emphasized an appreciation of identity and dignity as well as abandoning our preconceptions and assumptions about other people and cultures.

And that idea of otherness was the heart of Garman’s message about his experiences in conflict-torn Vietnam and Cambodia.

According to Garman, this “us vs. them” mentality is “an affront to dignity” in its oversimplification of the differences between humans. Humanity is diverse, and the world is enriched by that diversity of culture, ideas, and beliefs.

To Garman, using those differences to divide humanity into two distinct categories is to vilify those who are different from us, and to degrade their inborn dignity beholden to them as people.

Separating humanity into these two groups, as Garman pointed out, also contributes to atrocities such as the Cambodian Genocide.

Garman also championed the younger generation, which he believes has the power to bridge preconceptions and forge a human community and to transform – not transition – the world.