The American anthropologist Margaret Meade wrote, “As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate lovingly, our own”. I like to think that if Dr. Meade had lived into the internet age she would have been a leading voice online, taking advantage of every platform available to further this noble cause.

From the age of 23 she was passionate in her quest to connect the links between the distant cultures she studied to our contemporary lives. "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples -- faraway peoples -- so that Americans might better understand themselves."

She taught us through her 44 books, articles numbering in the thousands and as a ubiquitous guest on radio and TV, that the true value of studying remote cultures came only from how vigorously we applied them to our own lives.

That’s what we’re attempting to do here - we’re inviting you to be Margaret Meade.  Contribute your opinions and insights (stay below 500 words) on how one or several cultural discoveries presented here relate to our western culture or your personal life.

Send it to lastvoices@klatcher.com - it’s your chance to get published, and contribute to the Cultural Discoveries Project. If you’re published more than 3 times we’ll reward you with a music CD, Last Voices From Heaven, recorded on an epic journey into the remote villages of Papua New Guinea, with contemporary musical styles to bridge the gap between traditional and modern. 

Come along with us on this journey, we promise you’ll learn much about yourself.

Michael