Beyond Diversities
© Dr. Aliaa Rafea
Due to the revolution in the field of information technology, the world is getting closer. We have been frequently hearing about the world being a big village. Though this expression implies a kind of harmony and peaceful coexistence among the inhabitants of earth, truly looking at the world as a big village, is not quite so simple and gives rise to a number of questions. Could we with our various backgrounds, races, cultures and beliefs really be one big family, and one big village? Could we go beyond diversities and discover our oneness? This is our challenge in the third millennium.
Beyond diversities, the dichotomies that separate the human race may disappear. We may realize that those dichotomies are illusive. They were partly created out of the need of certain nation(s)/race(s) to stand as superior over other nation(s)/race(s). Within this context, the claim that "realities" are socially constructed applies; a contribution of cognitive anthropology. Along the line of this discipline, we have to trace these dichotomies to their historical and social emergence and not to accept them as facts anymore. In his book "Orientalism", Edward Saiid argues and explains how the notion of "oriental" as opposed to "occidental" with the cultural connotations associated with each, are western creations. By so doing, he opens a realm of possible speculations for reconsideration of what we believe as ipso facto.
Cultural multiplicity does not mean that we don't have common grounds as humans. On the other hand, calling to see beyond diversities does not mean that we are canceling and negating the right of cultural identities. Beyond diversities is a perspective that brings nations, races and cultures together. There is no need for clashes of civilizations; rather we need to see the one root out of which our modern civilization has been developing. We need to remind ourselves that our modern civilization is an outcome of a chain of contributions from other civilizations that appeared in different parts of the world in different times: from Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to the Islamic nations, to Europe and then to America. This time, the east may introduce its spiritual input and divert the attention from the mere economic concerns to humane issues. Beyond diversities, the world community has started already to realize the need to observe certain problems, globally, such as environment crisis, poverty, population's increase, natural resources' depletion, and so on and so forth. Such problems do not threaten one part of the world; they are shared among nations with different proportions and in different ways.
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