Friday, September 10, 2004
Clash of Civilisations
We are all different, but there are threads of common ground. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have the same God. WHy do we spend so much time fighting about him? There are threads of ideas that flow through all of them as well as Buddahism and Taoism. One thing that leaps to mind is the Tao and Logos. Read how Lao Tsu describes theTao then read John 1 in the Christian Bible. Yet we all are so certain we're right in our differences.
Professionally, I have been a systems analyst for a lot of years. When I look at to systems to interface them, I first look at how they are the same, then the differences. Finally, how can those systems be mapped so that they can reuse data from each system to perform their internal tasks.
We hear about differences across the world, mostly to flame the "other-ness" necessary for people to condone killing each other. So what can we find to focus on about our similarities. What can we understand enough to map some of the differences so we can work with them rather than deleting the "other system"
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3 comments:
The world is chaos and our trying to understand it is what makes us kill each other.
Maybe?
The world is chaos? I don't believe it is. I think there is more to it than we can understand, and that makes it seem chaotic. It is like the levels of complexity fromg Gallileo to Newton to Einstein. Each was correct at the level they were able to address. Gallileo's physics worked on a human level. Newton's worked at a galactic level. Einstein was more correct at the atomic/planetary level. Modern physics is taking it farther. Do they negate each other? No, they each have built a better picture...on the shoulders of giants. So it is not chaos that a butterfly creates a hurricane, but it is a system we cannot account for with our limitations.
We can always strive to expand our limits of understanding. We can try to understand people, if not countries. We can realize we all are just people trying to make it through a world we cannot understand.
The problem with many (not all) religious people is they mistake faith for knowledge. These people think they know the answer. They think it is revealed in the bible or the koran or the vedas or the torah or whatever, in its entirety. But faith isn't knowledge and it shouldn't lead to certainity. Faith is a virtue, and like all virtues it comes with risks and difficulties. If you have the answers, life is easy. If you have faith, its hard. Most people opt for the easy way.
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