Magic Spray
Well-Known Member
I agree that most returned missionaries, in general, have been exposed to a single different culture for a two year span. The problem is that the majority of those missionaries are there to convert members of another culture to an American religion. That's fine but it doesn't lend itself well to breaking out of an ethnocentric mindset. I know from my experiences that very few of my fellow missionaries, in actuality, grew to fully respect and appreciate the culture they were immersed in. In fact, many of them were disrespectful of the culture and there was a strong sense of false superiority. Which is ironic and sadly hypocritical. This isn't an outlier. The attitude exists because the belief that other cultures need to convert to Mormonism to be saved exists and also because we're not actually immersed in the culture. We carry objectives and goals into their culture and the baggage prevents us, barely even adults, from learning the lessons we should be learning from exposure to different cultures. Instead of being an enlightened people, I think returned missionaries become more unconsciously entrenched in ethnocentric attitudes. They think they've learned to love and respect a separate culture and have convinced themselves of that but in reality have simply become convinced of their own culture's superiority.
This is all good for the Church because when a missionary actually does learn to appreciate and love a different culture the result is often a degree of inactivity.
I think the above is also tied directly to the implicit kind of unconscious racism of the area too. We're super convinced that we're not racist, like at all. How could we be? WE LIVED IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY FOR TWO YEARS AND WE TOTALLY LOVED THE PEOPLE THERE. PLEASE GET BAPTIZED!
100% was my experience. I also heard a ton of missionaries from utah/idaho/california/arizona use the n-word super casually with each other all the time. But that's probably just an isolated thing I'm sure.