Since I am studying in proximity to a good library right now, I am also trying to examine some of the books that I have had on my 'wishlist' for a while and see how good they really are. In Lustig and Koester's Intercultural Competence, I found this nugget which relates directly to the need I constantly see for us to meet and be in relationship with those we fear or reject, whether our fears are cultural, economic/vocational, religious, or martial. It is difficult for us to love 'them' - whoever 'they' might be - without meaningful relationship.
The casual we for most of us does not include the 50 percent hungry, the 60 percent in shantytowns, and the 70 percent illiterate. Most of us construct our we without including them. Thinking of the world close up, as if it was a village of one thousand people, forces us to confront what we mean when we say "we." ...
How often does our we come to include people of other faiths, other nations, other races? How often does our we link rather than divide? Our relation with the "other" may move, as Smith puts it, through a number of phases. First we talk about them - an objective "other." Then perhaps we talk to them, or more personally, we talk to you. Developing a real dialogue, we talk with you. And finally, we all talk with one another about us, all of us. This is the crucial stage to which our... dialogue must take us if we are to be up to the task of creating communication adequate for an interdependent world.
- Diana L. Eck, as quoted in Lustig's Intercultural Competence, pg 5 (italics original)
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| If the world were a thousand-person village... (2001 stats; ibid., 4) |
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