It's like peeling back multiple layers of skin from a fruit or a nut; each time that you think you have worked your way through to the kernel of truth there's another husk between you and the truth. These are subtle nuances that aren't thick enough to prevent you from seeing the ultimate goal, but they are sufficient to keep you from touching it.
For instance, I recently ventured the opinion that one could choose to fulfil or not fulfil one’s dharma. But I was gently corrected and told that dharma was either adhered to or not adhered to and choice had nothing to do with it. I think I understand the difference, but I don’t think I'm capable of putting it into words except to hazard that dharma simply exists and choice implies doing something. I can choose to do, or not do, that which helps me fulfil my dharma but I can't choose dharma.
I still don't know if even that's right, but that where my thought process has taken me to after a year and a half of reading, thinking, and talking about it with others. It's been a slow and steady progress towards understanding on something deeper then an intellectual and philosophical level and I'm still only getting occasional glimpses of the complete picture.
To me this diversity of thought is something that is to be celebrated and be in awe of. I find it amazing that the human race, with its one basic pattern, has developed such a diversity of means to express concepts and beliefs. But if we look back at the scenario put forward by Douglas Adams we can also see how this beauty can become dangerous if we allow ourselves to be wilfully ignorant of the rest of our planet's inhabitants.
Instead of having the decency to be grateful for the abundance we have been given, some of us, too many in fact for anybody's safety, believe that they represent the only right way of thinking and being. Not only do these people not make any attempt to see what beauty the person next to them has to offer, they work hard to extinguish it and replace it with there own beliefs.
You want to guarantee that someone is going to resent and hate you for generations to come? Simple, try to steal their language, culture, and belief system away from them and jam yours down their throats. One of the few occasions that I know in which this didn't happen was in Canada. No, not with the native people who lived here when the Europeans showed up, but between the English and the French.
Article comments
1 - diana hartman
I am pleased to tell you this article is being featured in the Culture Focus today, September 20th.
Diana Hartman
Culture Editor
2 - Nancy
Some good points, but what about when the next fella's cultural practices simply cannot be tolerated in decency, as in the case of, say, female genital mutilation/circumcision, marrying off pre-adolescent girls to old men with other wives already, or routine torture or cruelty to animals, or when he displays no concept of basic hygiene to the point where it violates health laws?