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"