No disagreement with anything you've written Ariel.
A very perceptive comment, not an answer to my questions, but a perceptive comment none the less.
As for people from one society and culture using the dress and manners of a person from a different society, yes, I also find that a little strange, still if it makes them happy who am I to say they're doing the wrong thing?
Rather than dress and habits in synch, a more useful device may be to try to adapt one's thought processes to similar patterns as those in the society which one wishes to understand. It’s a bit difficult to communicate on a common level with somebody from a different society who exists on less than $100 a month and who cannot read, or write, and who thinks that foreign airlines should pay tax for flying over Indonesia when they go from New York to London, because of course they need to fly over Indonesia as it is between those two places (NY to the east, London to the west), and who sees spirits rising out of the ground to give approval for a digging well, if one has a world view that is stuck firmly in the 21st century.
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