Abstract: Question 1: The human world normally contains differences and conflict because of the variance of beliefs and traditions. The more absolutistic and exclusivistic such differences become, the more they are seen as threats. example, the Persian threat to the ancient Greek people, the Turkish threat to Europe in the late Renaissance era, the Yellow Danger, then the Red Threat, and now the Islamic Threat. Conversely, in the Islamic world, there was colonialism and the intimidation by the West. Do you have any suggestions that will enable us to overcome these large obstacles? Swidler: Everyone in the past and, sadly, still much too often in the present, tends to read history in a very selective fashion. example, contemporary Muslims often rail against the Western Crusades and colonialism--not noting that it was via jihad that Muslims came to be in North Africa, the Middle East, etc. Further, if the scientific evidence is correct that all Homo sapiens began in central Africa, must we look for some Neanderthals to whom to give Europe back, and some Early Amerindians (who, nevertheless, came earlier from Asia) to whom to return North and South America? Must then most North and South Americans and Europeans move to Central Africa and all the Arabs who have spread from Iraq to Mauritania move back to the Arabian peninsula? From the earliest civilizations--Sumer, Egypt, the Indus River Valley, the Yellow/Yangtze River Valley--religion and culture have been two sides of a single coin. Religion helped to shape culture, and culture gave expression to religion. A central part of culture is the state. Until the appearance of something like authentic democracy--where the masses of the Demos, people, are literate and can seriously engage in informed discussion and decision--states have been in a very immature stage of development in their self-understanding and their relations to each other. As authentic democracy--which demands not just voting but, fundamentally, a democratic consciousness--spreads, there will gradually develop a determining consciousness that will increasingly seek the common welfare and not just raison d'etat. It seems to me that Homo sapiens is perhaps at the adolescent stage of maturation. What I find encouraging, however, is that the rate of maturation is now increasing exponentially, so that there is solid reason--despite all the destruction in the contemporary world (those of us old enough to have experienced World War II are aware in our bodies and psyches that the present is dramatically less destructive than seventy years ago)--to hope that my grandchild will inherit a world in which states do not prey on each other. Some may think this a chimera, but I ask all who are forty years old or older, which of you--or, indeed, who in the KGB and CIA--in 1987 would have even dreamed that in 1991 there would be no Soviet Union? Dreams are the stuff out of which reality is created. Question 2: In contrast to the calls for a serious dialogue between the followers of other religions and cultures in the world, sometimes there are statements by persons holding high positions, representing certain religions, which attack other religions fiercely. What do you see is the impact caused by these statements, and what should be done about them? Swidler: The effect that such statements have, of course, is depressing, and they are incitements to further violence. I would repeat here the ancient truism: For evil to happen, all that is necessary is for good women and men to do nothing! Hence, when these leaders issue destructive statements, all good men and women need to leap to counteract them positively and immediately in every possible creative way. We have a special problem here, however. It is the very nature of mass communications media that making positive statements is far less likely to be broadly reported--but negative ones are. Dog bites man is not news; only man bites dog is news. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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