Xenophobia... Vanessa Redgrave (repost)

I've first published it in June, 12, 2008 and felt like reposting it. I did a little association with mental illness.

Xenophobia...
That was the word Vanessa Redgrave did answer James Lipton for the question "What is your least favorite word?" on the famous "Inside Actor's Studio".
I admire this woman immensely. Julia is one of my favorites movies and she told how she came up producing and acting. She was on a theater and a cinema usher showed Lillian Hellman's book. As she didn't had read he lend it to her.
She did read it in one night and decided to make the movie. I saw an interview where Lillian said she hated the scene when Jane Fonda throw away the typewriter through the window for she loved her machine and would never consider doing something like that.
And Vanessa is right. Xenophobia comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "someone with whom you are not acquainted", and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear".
In the beginning of this century while the word globalization conveys a sympathetic image but covers the worst face of the capitalistic system, whose sole aim seems to be producing money and it's values are spreading all over the world, xenophobia hears it's ugly head in many different ways.
I would think twice spending one year in Paris while on the eighties I was received with great hospitality. Perhaps because I was around people linked to arts but I'm not sure. I was treated well by French people everywhere I went. I speak the language and it helps.
But I'm not sure if it would be the same.
I've received a six month visa in UK although I was just spending a week before returning home.
But from the news I've been reading it seems that things would be very different.
Some Americans uses a backpack with a Canadian flag while abroad. Neo-nazists are on Germany and in other countries denying holocaust and beating people.
In South-Africa another kind of racism is going on.
I will not raise the whole faces of xenophobia for I would have to make a long list.
What does it has to do with mental health?
A silly association that was planted in my brain.
(xenos), meaning "someone with whom you are not acquainted"
I don't know the Greek word for "something with which you are not acquainted". However it seems to me that the stigma crazy people suffer has something to do with lack of knowledge of what are the feelings of a depressed person and all others conditions that are not under the normal umbrella.
It's about time people acquainted themselves with other people's feelings.
We don't fear what we know although some people choose to hate what they know.
Posted by Ana at 2:39 PM