As I have said earlier, in today’s world there is no place for those who seek to impose their views or beliefs on others by means of force.
Those who seek to promote their own agenda to the detriment of others must be restrained and persuaded that everyone is allowed to maintain their own diversity.
Whether that detriment falls now or in the future is irrelevant. This planet and our species do not exist in a single moment of time. There is a future for all that is carried on our spaceship Earth, and we must not be the generation that squandered that future for the sake of a few brownie points or a momentary perceived advantage over a neighbour or an ideological opponent.
We are all on the same planet, so we cannot be enemies, we must all seek to work together to maintain the direction and future of our existence.
If we continue to define ourselves as this tribe or that religion and seek to impose that tribe or religion’s ideology on others, then the future for our children will be measured in protests and violent conflict. This is not to say that the freedom to express that ideology should be restricted. Every person must be encouraged and enabled to maintain their contribution to the richness that is the world’s cultural diversity and heritage. Without that contribution, we will turn this planet into what George Orwell described in ‘1984′.
When we become tourists and travel the world, we do it not because it will be the same where we are going, but because it will be different. A key part of that is to experience the local culture and compare it to our own. To allow anyone to decrease that diversity existing across our planet is to allow them to impose their own version of life on others.
We must all be able to keep to our own standards and traditions as long as they do not adversely impact the ability of others to do the same. There must be freedom of choice at a personal level to follow others or to follow a path less well travelled. If someone does not follow the same values as the majority of their community, as long as there is no harm from those values, there must be no criticism or denunciation because of that choice.
Inevitably there will be conflict. As people spread across the planet they will continue to come into contact with others who do not agree with them, and whose interests are not compatible together. Daily there is a requirement on all of us for greater tolerance and compromise in the interaction of different ideologies. If a picture paints a thousand words, then a thousand words are far more preferable to the picture we see daily in the media of one ideology inflicting violence on another.
This entry was posted on February 20, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Ideology and Tolerance of Diversity
By goodtalkingAs I have said earlier, in today’s world there is no place for those who seek to impose their views or beliefs on others by means of force.
Those who seek to promote their own agenda to the detriment of others must be restrained and persuaded that everyone is allowed to maintain their own diversity.
Whether that detriment falls now or in the future is irrelevant. This planet and our species do not exist in a single moment of time. There is a future for all that is carried on our spaceship Earth, and we must not be the generation that squandered that future for the sake of a few brownie points or a momentary perceived advantage over a neighbour or an ideological opponent.
We are all on the same planet, so we cannot be enemies, we must all seek to work together to maintain the direction and future of our existence.
If we continue to define ourselves as this tribe or that religion and seek to impose that tribe or religion’s ideology on others, then the future for our children will be measured in protests and violent conflict. This is not to say that the freedom to express that ideology should be restricted. Every person must be encouraged and enabled to maintain their contribution to the richness that is the world’s cultural diversity and heritage. Without that contribution, we will turn this planet into what George Orwell described in ‘1984′.
When we become tourists and travel the world, we do it not because it will be the same where we are going, but because it will be different. A key part of that is to experience the local culture and compare it to our own. To allow anyone to decrease that diversity existing across our planet is to allow them to impose their own version of life on others.
We must all be able to keep to our own standards and traditions as long as they do not adversely impact the ability of others to do the same. There must be freedom of choice at a personal level to follow others or to follow a path less well travelled. If someone does not follow the same values as the majority of their community, as long as there is no harm from those values, there must be no criticism or denunciation because of that choice.
Inevitably there will be conflict. As people spread across the planet they will continue to come into contact with others who do not agree with them, and whose interests are not compatible together. Daily there is a requirement on all of us for greater tolerance and compromise in the interaction of different ideologies. If a picture paints a thousand words, then a thousand words are far more preferable to the picture we see daily in the media of one ideology inflicting violence on another.
Tags: compromise, cultural diversity, freedom of choice, freedom of expression, Ideology, spaceship earth, tolerance, tribal conflict, violence
This entry was posted on February 20, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.