"where I'm from" v.s. "where I'm a local"

這個講者提到一個我以前沒想過的概念。
那就是當我們提到「我從哪裡（國家）來」的時候，
我們是被分類到一個國家（主權）意識，
連帶地可能被賦予了一個刻板印象、
或是下意識地在做國家權力間的比較。
而這樣「自我感覺良好」地說出自己從哪裡來，
其實是很有限的資訊，並不能好好定義「我們是誰」。

她倡議用「我有哪些地方的在地特質」來取代，
鼓勵我們去思考被哪些地方的3R影響最多，
成為一個multi-local, multi-layered的人。

也許以後我會學習這樣回答我從哪裡來：
板橋，新竹，哥德堡。

6:34

So, where are you a local? I propose a three-step test. I call these the three "R’s": rituals, relationships, restrictions.

6:45

First, think of your daily rituals, whatever they may be: making your coffee, driving to work, harvesting your crops, saying your prayers. What kind of rituals are these? Where do they occur? In what city or cities in the world do shopkeepers know your face? ... The rituals were familiar. "R" number one, rituals.

7:36

Now, think of your relationships, of the people who shape your days. To whom do you speak at least once a week, be it face to face or on FaceTime? Be reasonable in your assessment; I'm not talking about your Facebook friends. I'm speaking of the people who shape your weekly emotional experience. ...

8:05

We're local where we carry out our rituals and relationships, but how we experience our locality depends in part on our restrictions. By restrictions, I mean, where are you able to live? What passport do you hold? Are you restricted by, say, racism, from feeling fully at home where you live? By civil war, dysfunctional governance, economic inflation, from living in the locality where you had your rituals as a child? This is the least sexy of the R’s, less lyric than rituals and relationships, but the question takes us past "Where are you now?" to "Why aren't you there, and why?" Rituals, relationships, restrictions.

...

14:26

Perhaps my biggest problem with coming from countries is the myth of going back to them. I'm often asked if I plan to "go back" to Ghana. I go to Accra every year, but I can't "go back" to Ghana. It's not because I wasn't born there. My father can't go back, either. The country in which he was born, that country no longer exists. We can never go back to a place and find it exactly where we left it. Something, somewhere will always have changed, most of all, ourselves. People.

...

14:58

Finally, what we're talking about is human experience, this notoriously and gloriously disorderly affair. In creative writing, locality bespeaks humanity. The more we know about where a story is set, the more local color and texture, the more human the characters start to feel, the more relatable, not less. The myth of national identity and the vocabulary of coming from confuses us into placing ourselves into mutually exclusive categories. In fact, all of us are multi -- multi-local, multi-layered. To begin our conversations with an acknowledgement of this complexity brings us closer together, I think, not further apart.

還有一點我想提的是，聽完這個TED，
不曉得為何腦海一直迴響這一首老歌《橄欖樹》 ：