Borders of the mind & worlds of possibility

BORDERS OF THE MIND& WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY

Ruben de Freitas Cabral15-17 May 2008

Macau

Richard Lewis1, in his book When cultures collide, tells

us a very amusing story:

I was once in charge of an EnglishLanguage Summer Course in North Wales foradult students from three countries –Italy, Japan and Finland. Intensiveinstruction was relieved by entertainmentin the evening and by day excursions toplaces of scenic or historical interest.

We had scheduled a trip up Mount Snowdonon a particular Wednesday, but on Tuesdayevening it rained heavily. Around 10o’clock that night, during the after-dinner dancing, a dozen or so Finnsapproached me and suggested that we cancel

1 Lewis, Richard D. (1997). When cultures collide. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing Limited, p. 1)

Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility

the excursion, as it would be no funclimbing the muddy slopes of Snowdon inheavy rain. I, of course, agreed andannounced the cancellation. Immediately Iwas surrounded by protesting Italiansdisputing the decision. Why cancel thetrip – they had been looking forward to it(escape from lessons), they had paid forit in their all-inclusive fee, a littlerain would not hurt anyone and what wasthe matter with the Finns anyway – weren’tthey supposed to be tough people?A little embarrassed, I consulted theJapanese contingent. They were very, verynice. If the Italians wanted to go, theywould go, too. If, on the other hand, wecancelled the trip they would be quitehappy to stay in and take more lessons.The Italians jeered at the Finns, theFinns mumbled and scowled, and eventually,in order not to lose face, agreed theywould go. The excursion was declared on.

It rained torrentially all night and alsowhile I took a quick breakfast. The buswas scheduled to leave at half past eight,and at twenty-five past, taking myumbrella in the downpour, I ran to thevehicle. Inside were 18 scowling Finns, 12smiling Japanese, and no Italians. We lefton time and had a terrible day. The rain

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never let up, we lunched in cloud at thesummit and returned covered in mud at 5o’clock, in time to see the Italianstaking tea and chocolate biscuits. Theyhad sensibly stayed in bed. When the Finnsasked them why, they said because it wasraining…

In these days of colliding of cultures and of

clashing civilizations, stories abound of the

different ways in which people from different

cultures perceive and manage situations.

Unfortunately, the outcomes of such differing world

perspectives are not as funny, nor as mild as those

portrayed in this story. It seems that all of

sudden, we are not just different, but contrarian,

and in some cases plainly adversarial toward each

other.

Even though globalization may have become a fact of

life and many of us may perceive the world as a

global village, the rise of extreme forms of

cultural nationalism and of radical approaches to

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religiosity have transformed many cities of light

into dark arenas of hate and violence. Suddenly

immersed in ever larger communities of nations and

cultures, observing the dilution of notions such as

independence, sovereignty and State, and feeling in

their bones the fragility of the human condition in

times of inexorable change, many have sought

protection in the attempt to stem the tide,

confusing cultural identity with nationalism,

globalization with de-culturation and violence of

whatever form with personal and social affirmation.

This does not seem to be a new phenomenon. Human

history is sadly sown with similar situations.

Perhaps the majority of human beings still live in

a world that does not belong to them. They are

reified in that world. They are not subjects of the

world, but are perceived and perceive themselves as

objects in that world, or as Sartre2 once said, the

former (subjects) had the word. The others (objects) had the use2 Sartre, Jean Paul (1963). Preface to Fanon, Frantz, The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press, p. 7.

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of it. Sometimes this disenfranchisement is imposed by

exogenous circumstances, such as colonization of

whatever form, endemic poverty, or deliberate

discrimination. In other cases, disenfranchisement

is self-inflicted by the inability of some to

identify, understand and cope with the sweeping

dynamics of social change. Be it exogenous or

endogenous, disenfranchisement must not be

neglected or perceived as the machinations of some

small and marginal groups, for free societies have

to keep in mind that until all are free, nobody is

really free. Disenfranchisement, after all, is akin

to dangerous forms of mental imprisonment.

The violence that springs from this collision or

clashing of cultures affects all enfranchised and

all disenfranchised, and has changed – one hopes

temporarily - the full exercise of our freedoms.

The borders of today have changed in their form and

content. They are now more mindsets than physical

barriers. With some notorious exceptions, the world

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has become more common ground than, it seems, at

any other time in history, and its

interconnectedness has reached such a high level of

complexity and sophistication that somewhere has

turned into everywhere, and everywhere into the here

and now. There is no place to hide. There is no

formal notification of hostilities.

Whether we are in a collision of cultures or in a

clash of civilizations – and the argument is purely

academic – we are engaged, consciously and

unconsciously, in the creation of a reality that

befuddles the most prescient of us. How can we

harness the power of globalization, of a united and

interconnected world, for the greater good of us

all? How to define what identifies us as cultural

persons and as cultures? What does nationalism or

even patriotism mean to us today? How to engage

others constructively and in real time? How to deal

with evil forms of authoritarianism? How to

eradicate the brutal manipulation and traffic of

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human beings? Where do we draw the line between

interference in the affairs of a supposedly

sovereign state and human conditions that

conscripts us, ethically and morally, to act? If

the world has become a global village shouldn’t we

feel bound to assist our neighbors in need?

Issues of culture can no longer be treated as

precisely circumscribed phenomena in time and

space. They are dynamic by nature and exist in the

here and now, wherever that may be. Issues of

disenfranchisement, be it social, political and/or

economic, or of intercultural and inter-religious

hostility often spring from undercurrents of social

and personal marginalization and from situations of

great injustice, real or perceived, as Derek

Woodrow3 well states. The anger shown recently by

the young in the banlieus of Paris, or in streets

and alleys of Gaza, of Harare or Nairobi stem also

3 Woodrow, Derek. Social construction of theoretical beliefs. In Woodrow, Derek, Gajendra K. Verma et al. (1997). Intercultural education: Theories, policies and practice. Brookfield, USA: Ashgate, p. 29.

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from a maddening absence of hope, from feeling

dispossessed of a future that seems to be owned by

the young who live just a few streets away, from

owning skins which set them apart and from using

minds drilled in the processes of divorcing the

received reality from the one that they perceive.

Many political systems confuse the need to

integrate the disenfranchised with explicit

strategies to assimilate them into the prevailing

culture. However, while integration is a full

humanizing process, assimilation tends to

depersonalize those involved in the process. The

already quoted Derek Woodrow,4 writing about this

process in Europe, wrrite the following:

In Western Europe the Marxisteducationalists of the 1960s and 70sclearly established that education is avehicle for socialization, for confirming

4 Woodrow, Derek. Social construction of theoretical beliefs. In Woodrow, Derek, Gajendra K. Verma et al. (1997). Intercultural education: Theories, policies and practice. Brookfield, USA: Ashgate, p. 31.

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and continuing the social order and forconditioning the populace to their variedroles. In more recent times it has beenviewed, with fewer overt politicalovertones, as a vehicle forenculturation. It is this notion ofenculturation which has underwritten muchmulticultural and plural education inthat it presupposes that there is thepossibility of affecting futuregenerations into conformity of acceptancerather than the enculturation of pupilsby their own social racist setting. Thisview of education as controlled andmanaged enculturation has bred a sense ofhistorical inevitability (…) This resultsin the replacement of the mediaevalentrapment of serfdom with the modernimpressment of being a servant to thestate.

Strong words indeed, but words that aptly describe

so many real situations. There have been, however,

some significant successes. Sweden and Portugal

have in recent years have been very successful in

developing programs to enfranchise and to integrate

immigrants from the underdeveloped and from the

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developing world. The road, however, has been

arduous and fraught with pain.

The end of the 19th century and the first half of

the 20th saw the emergence of the industrial might

of the United States and the arrival of uncounted

millions of immigrants from all over the world:

poor, many times illiterate, garlic smelling and

with unpronounceable names, a lot quite different

from the prevailing WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon

protestant) population.

In an era defined by the preponderance of

nationalism, the young republic strove to foster

not just unity, but also uniformity. The policy

soon became one of fast assimilation of these

huddles of human masses into the so-called Homo

Americanus. Society was viewed as a melting pot

where the uncouth would be reborn as acceptable and

recognizable American citizens. The model for the

Homo Americanus was, of course, a certain kind of

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WASP: tall, blond, generous, well spoken, brave,

self-assured. The policy was a complete failure.

Many gave up on garlic and anglicized their names,

but turning black hair into blond and olive skin

into a fair complexion proved to be a much hardier

task.

The civil rights struggle forced the realization

that in spite of the melting pot ideology, nothing

really was being melted and that in the end there

was no pot. And so was born the hyphenated

American. All of a sudden it became chic to have a

Cherokee grand-mother, an Italian godfather, and a

German uncle. Color was in. Multiculturalism, thus,

became nothing more than the realization that,

after all, America was a mosaic of many cultures,

that everybody had a cultural home, that people

needed to enrich themselves through the discovery

of their own cultural identities.

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A perfunctory analysis of the state of the

different cultures soon made evident the prevalence

of policies of deliberate discrimination, the

social, political and economic disenfranchisement

of what became known as minorities, and the

abhorrent inequality that marked the lives of

Black, Hispanic, Asian, some forgotten groups of

whites (like those from the Appalachians) and even

Women. The Great Society of President Johnson

determines the high point of the multicultural

approach.

The multicultural approach has been widely

criticized, especially by the European proponents

of interculturalism. Be it as it may, if many

programs did not totally fulfill expectations, they

enabled previously powerless people to learn the

ways of political organization and intervention;

they provided the means for rehabilitation of many

dilapidated inner-cities; they facilitated the

ingress of minorities of all kinds into secondary

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and higher education; they lifted many people from

abject poverty; they raised the consciousness of

all for an America that was largely unknown or

ignored; they brought a higher sense of fairness to

race relations; they made schooling available for

many non-English speaking students; they fostered a

sense of pride and belonging to many children,

adolescents and adults who had felt alienated in

their own land; they opened highways of

understanding and cooperation difficult to imagine

before; they paved the way for the emergence of

credible and viable candidates to the Presidency,

such as a woman and a black man.

James Banks5, one of the leading scholars of

multiculturalism in the United States, points the

importance of multicultural literacy as a condition

for the acquisition and development of knowledge:

5 Banks, James A. (2003). Teaching for multicultural literacy, global citizenship, and

social justice. (On Line)

www.lib.umd.edu/PAL/SCPA/fowlercolloq2003 banks paper.html

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http://www.lib.umd.edu/PAL/SCPA/fowlercolloq2003bankspaper.html


Multicultural literacy consists of theskills and ability to identify thecreators of knowledge and their interests(Banks, 1996), to uncover the assumptionsof knowledge, to view knowledge fromdiverse ethnic and cultural perspectives,and to use knowledge to guide action thatwill create a humane and just world.

While America discovered their multicultural

identity, Europe had taken a different route. The

cultures were there for all to see, observable and

often corresponding to nation-states. In the

aftermath of the Second World War the forced and

economic driven migrations of people within the

continent changed significantly the demographic

landscape of most countries. Former enemies were

now living side by side, sometimes on the same

street.

The need was felt to diffuse the hostilities of

centuries by engendering a dialogue between the

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different cultures. This dialogical approach came

to be known as interculturalism. Dialogue, however,

to be effective requires two main conditions:

reciprocity and a comparable power status between

the parties. This seldom happens and real dialogue

rarely occurs. At best, the different parties issue

statements, grievances and expectations. Cultural

minorities cannot dialogue with their masters.

The policies pursued in America, Canada and in

certain European countries have contributed to

diminishing feelings of alienation on the part of

countless immigrants. In many other cases, however,

dialogue has consisted merely of insignificant

concessions, fruitless political pronouncements and

of letting people fend for themselves, sometimes in

near to impossible circumstances. The resulting

wounds tend to remain open and to fester. Not

surprisingly, eruptions of violence tend to become

more common. This one-sided dialogue is quite

selfish and self-serving by nature. If, today, the

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politics of oil has brought us instability,

resentment and war, these may pale before the

potential consequences of famines wrought by the

policies of the so-called green biofuels. How to

justify, through dialogue, to the hungry that their

bread must fuel our cars?

Other kinds of inter- and multiculturalism are also

surfacing today. I have been following numerous

blogs, posted generally by young people, who feel

that their cultural identity is threatened. They

call themselves the identity movement. These numerous

bloggers advance what we could call a perverted kind

of inter- or multiculturalism. They assume the

equality of all cultures, but they object to their

co-existence in the same place. They claim that for

cultures to be preserved, they should continue to

live in their traditional geographies. A kind of

apartheid, of racism of the kind: equal but

separate. Needless to say that at the root of these

pronouncements is unmitigated fear. They do not

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understand and cannot cope with a borderless world.

They fear the advance of African migrations to

Europe, many times associated with Islam, and the

attacks on New York, Madrid or London seem to

underwrite and justify their very pretenses.

Inter and multiculturalisms were indubitably a very

positive step in our times. Both approaches

affirmed the inherent value of cultural diversity

as a matrix of life, and turned an objective social

reality (the existence of many cultures in any

place as the result of migrations and immigration)

into a political reality. This was no small

achievement. However, it led very often to the

ghettoization of ethnic groups, thus ensuring the

surfacing of what Allan Touraine6 calls

pluritribalisme. One of the most striking examples of

this failure is, for example, the sprouting of

British homegrown Islamic terrorists, and the

6 Cited by Cuccioletta PhD, Donald (2002). Multiculturalism or transculturalism: Towards a cosmopolitan citizenship. In London Journal of Canadian Studies, 2001-2002, (17).

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disenfranchisement of many French youths of

Maghrebian origin.

In addition, both inter and multiculturalisms tend

to fall into the trap of relativism. The assertion

that all cultures are equal does not raise many

eyebrows. We can accept it. That all aspects of any

culture are equally moral and ethical is of course

unacceptable. While, for example, male circumcision

is widely accepted and it is even considered a good

prophylactic measure, female circumcision is

totally unacceptable. It is deliberate and

discriminatory mutilation and a flagrant perversion

of basic humanistic principles.

Richard Pearce7 calls our attention to another

peril in cultural studies:

There is a school of thought which seeksthe unification of human cultures by

7 Pearce, Richard (2003). A biologist’s view of individual cultural identity for the study of cities. (On Line) http://ideas.repec.org/p/fem/femwpa/2003.77.html, p. 9

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http://ideas.repec.org/p/fem/femwpa/2003.77.html


imposing “universal values”, on thegrounds that they can easily be identifiedand agreed. This view is disprovable inpractice and in philosophical theory, buta dangerous form comes with the“Essentialist” or “Universalist”instrumental value that the subject’s ownvalues are the universal ones, which theyhave a right and a duty to impose.

Needless to say, this sort of discourse must be

opposed. The other problem with universal values is

that they are not as universal as we think.

Kohlberg’s research proved that only justice, and

only when defined by the Golden Rule, did have

universal expression: It is accepted by all ethnic

and cultural groups across all kinds of geography.

Later attempts were made to develop similar

approaches to love and faith, but they were quite

unconvincing. The principle of justice, however,

when defined by the golden rule, serves perfectly

as the base for our assertion of most human rights.

While universal values must nurture the horizons of

our cultural development, and while the consortium

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of nations does have the right to confront

abhorrent cases of human rights’ abuses, such as

genocide, the emergence and development of cultures

must follow a more natural pattern.

If imposition may be wrong and undesirable, some

theorists argue that globalization may be creating

the conditions for the emergence of a unified world

culture. The argument is based on the human and

social effects of globalization and on its derived

paradigms of the Third Culture Kid, or of the Global

Nomad8. Briefly, there is a growing number of

children and adults who grow up and spend their

lives within two or more cultures. These include

children of intercultural marriages and the

experience of the adult partners as well. Studies

suggest that these persons identified themselves

with more than one culture, developing what we

could call multiple cultural identities.

8 Pollock, David C., Van Reken, Ruth E. (1998). The third culture kid experience: Growing up among worlds. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

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This trend, called by their proponents transculturalism

(the word has been copyrighted by Claude Grunitsky,

the creator of Trace, a magazine designed to promote

this type of approach to cultural studies, and

author of Transculturalism: How the World is Coming

Together9), is supposed and, perhaps, expected to

overcome the deficiencies of the inter and

multicultural approaches. They claim that while

inter and multiculturalism focused on the

differences between cultures, albeit from a

positive perspective, transculturalism presupposes

transcending those differences.

The problem with this approach is clear: what

differences do I transcend? And you? And you? And

you? And if this transcendence is available

practically only to global nomads, does this mean

that transculturalism is a privilege of corporate

executives, international school teachers and

missionaries? That is, the traveled, the affluent9 Gilsinan, Kathy (2004). Professors take stab at defining transculturalism. (On Line: www.columbiaspectator.com/node/14744

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http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/14744


and the attractive? Trace magazine is famous for

displaying photos of glamorous people with

transracial features, people like Angelina Jolie,

Tiger Woods, Lewis Hamilton, or, why not? Barack

Obama. Other researchers raise the issue that

conformity may be an ingrained element in this kind

of multiculturalism. In any case, while we may

enlist ourselves in various cultures, or at least

in portions of those cultures, we need the sense of

belonging in our survival kit. While we may be

opened more and more to the world, we understand

the world, as pointed by Banks, through the

hermeneutic maps of our cultures. Fritjof Capra10

says it this way:

People in different cultures havedifferent identities because they sharedifferent sets of values and beliefs. Atthe same time, an individual may belong toseveral different cultures. People’sbehavior is informed and restricted bytheir cultural identities, which in turn

10 Capra, Fritjof (2002). The hidden connections. New York: Anchor Books, p. 87

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reinforces their sense of belonging. (…)Cultural identity also reinforces theclosure of the network by creating aboundary of meaning and expectations thatlimits the access of people andinformation to the network. Thus thesocial network is engaged in communicationwithin a cultural boundary which itsmembers continually re-create andrenegotiate. This situation is not unlikethat of the metabolic network of a cell(…).

This re-creation and renegotiation of meanings,

expectations and boundaries is catalyzed, at the

micro and macro levels, by the intercourse between

members of cultures and by the cultures themselves.

Although ours is the age of trans-anything, the

term transculturalism, or transculturation, was

coined in the 1940 by the Cuban scholar Fernando

Ortiz in his essay Del fenómeno social de la transculturación

y de su importancia en Cuba (The social phenomenon of

transculturation and its importance in Cuba).

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Gustavo Pérez Firmat11, then of the Department of

Romance Languages of Duke University, explains the

thinking of Ortiz:

The phenomenon of culture contact actuallyhas phases: “deculturation,” or theshedding of certain elements from theculture of origin; “acculturation,” or theacquisition of elements of anotherculture; and “neoculturation,” or the newcultural synthesis created from the oldand new cultures.

Although Ortiz here speaks of this process as

capable of attaining a finished synthesis, he

considers this phenomenon an unfinished process. In

his essay La cubanidade y los negros, written almost at

the same time, in 1939, he writes that

transculturalism is un concepto vital de fluencia constante,

rather than una realidade sintética ya formada y conocida12,11 Firmat, Gustavo Pérez (1987). From ajiaco to tropical soup: Fernando Ortiz and the definition of Cuban culture. (On line: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/laccopsd.16), p. 7.12 Firmat, Gustavo Pérez (1987). From ajiaco to tropical soup: Fernando Ortiz and the definition of Cuban culture. (On line: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/laccopsd.16), p. 8.

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http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/laccopsd.16

http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/laccopsd.16


that is, a vital concept in constant flow, rather than a

synthetic reality already formed and known.

Ortiz’ concept of transculturalism is a form of

métissage, or criollismo, a process also described by

Guy Scapetta13: Impurity is the order of the day. The we and you,

include also the he and the she of all linguistic groups, of all

nationalities, of all the sexes. We are of all cultures. Each person is a

mosaic. It would be hard to argue this sort of

métissage in today’s highly interconnected world,

where – and this differentiates us from previous

generations – everything seems to happen in real

time.

This may true in some cases and at the micro level.

I doubt, however, that this métissage is equally

true at the macro level. People have adopted, or

even assimilated, certain cultural artifacts alien

to their own: The success of hamburgers, for

13 Scarpetta, Guy, cited by Cuccioletta PhD, Donald (2002). Multiculturalism or transculturalism: Towards a cosmopolitan citizenship. In London Journal of Canadian Studies, 2001-2002, (17).

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example, is a German concoction commercialized to

its ultimate consequences by Americans. Looking,

however, at the world today, it seems that at the

macro level the sense of cultural identity is

strengthening, in the same manner, but in a more

negative way, that the specter of nationalism

displays here and there its ugliness. The European

Union, for example, is being constructed as a

dynamic mosaic of regions with their peculiar

cultures, even though the overt political

affirmation of power is exerted by the various

nation-states. There are sufficient examples,

however, of traditional cultural regions that,

although incorporated in different nation-states,

do band together in the pursuit of common goals. In

the same way that many of us – and this was and is

my experience as a global nomad – discovered the

nuances of our cultural identity when living in

foreign lands, peoples are becoming more aware of

their cultures in a world without borders.

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There is no doubt that we are in a process of

trans-something. The foreign is daily in our living

rooms, and even though we may not associate with

it, it becomes nonetheless part of who we are and

of the way in which we view the world. There is a

certain inclusiveness that, while not forging a

unified world culture, makes us more aware of and

close to those many others. The opposite, of course,

is equally true, for this social dynamics include

both consonance and dissonance.

While inter and multiculturalism were the product

of a world divided by superpowers and by all kinds

of physical and mental barriers, where adhesion to

well defined ideologies, creeds and national

sentiments was almost a requirement, the world

today is quite different: the superpowers are gone,

many of the physical barriers have disappeared or

been significantly diluted, some of the mental

borders, however, do persist. Let us examine one of

them.

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Multiculturalism called for tolerance, for the

ability to recognize and to accept at least the

existence of the other. Tolerance, however, does not

demand co-habitation, and it rests on an insoluble

paradox: all are different, and all are equal. This

paradox was not a problem in a world fragmented by

all kinds of divisions. It is, however, a problem

in an interconnected and open world. The dyad

Equality - Difference is not an adequate metaphor for our

times. An open, interconnected and increasingly

complex world needs a new paradigm, for lack of a

better world.

The new metaphor or paradigm is interdependence. This

concept and this word, hardly heard ten years ago,

is almost in general use today. It has become

common place. Interdependence is indeed a much

better metaphor and it describes perhaps the

highest level of social development that we have so

far achieved.

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While tolerance was based on a paradox,

interdependence transcends difference by postulating

that we are not different bur unique. There is no

place for difference in uniqueness. What is unique is

unique and therefore also equal. Some other

word/concepts are also being replaced: we talk now

more of persons than individuals and more of

communities than societies. It appears that the

ideology of individualism is being superseded by a

more inclusive, open and dynamic approach to social

relations.

Interdependence is also the right metaphor for

complexity, for interconnectedness, for a world

that is more and more a web of relationships. From

this perspective transculturalism makes sense for

our age. Being closer together does not make us

into cultural clones, as many nationalist cultures

did. It recognizes us for what we are: persons and

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communities with their unique cultural identities

interwoven in a web of relationships.

This social phenomenon does not occur

simultaneously throughout the world. Diverse

peoples live in diverse stages of development. The

pattern however seems clear.

Jeff Lewis14 gives us a good description of this

approach to transculturalism:

Transculturalism is distinguished, inparticular, by its emphasis on theproblematics of contemporary culture, mostparticularly in terms of relationships,meaning-making, and power formation.However, transculturalism is as interestedin dissonance, tension, and instability asit is with the stabilizing effects ofsocial conjunction, communalism, andorganization. It seeks to illuminate thevarious gradients of culture and the ways

14 Jeff Lewis (2002). From culturalism to transculturalism. In Iowa Journalof Cultural Studies, (Spring 2002) (On line:www.uiowa.edu/~ijcs/issueone/lewis.htm)

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in which social groups “create” and“distribute” their meanings. Equally,though, transculturalism seeks toilluminate the ways in which social groupsinteract and experience tension. It isinterested in the destabilizing effects ofnon-meaning or meaning atrophy. It isinterested in the disintegration ofgroups, cultures, and power. In otherwords, transculturalism emphasizes thetransitory nature of culture as well asits power to transform.

Schooled as we are in the ways of dogmatism and of

textbook science, it seems difficult to absorb

immediately the transitory nature of culture. We seem to

believe that culture and tradition, two very close

concepts, are immutable by nature. Three minutes of

reflection, however, would immediately show us the

contrary. Culture and tradition are highly dynamic

phenomena that change as we change in a feedback

loop. There is nothing sacred about culture,

nothing immutable, nothing monolithic. In this way,

the very openness of our world ensures the survival

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and the full life of our cultures: unique, diverse

and dynamically interdependent.

How can we catalyze this process of fostering

inclusiveness through the understanding that our

diversity is made of the many uniqueness in life?

That globalization may indeed promote and

strengthen the many cultures of our world? That in

an interconnected world to seek exclusion is to

die, if indeed exclusion is at all possible?

Out there we find worlds of possibility. Inside us,

there are still so many borders: borders of fears,

ignorance, and phobias of all kinds. The borders of

our minds do indeed prevent us from exploring those

many worlds of possibility.

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Borders of the mind & worlds of possibility

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