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
2
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
3
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
4
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
5
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
6
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
7
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
8
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
9
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
10
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
11
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
12
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
13
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
14
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
15
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
16
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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).
17
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
18
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
19
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
20
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
21
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
22
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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).
23
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
24
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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).
25
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
26
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
27
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
28
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
29
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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)
30
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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
31
Borders of the mind and worlds of possibility
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.
32