Big Think

Roberto Monteiro commented on Is there a clash of civilizations? on January 30, 2008, 5:35 AM

I do agree with Reza Aslan's general point of view. Civilization mean people, even different in their traditions and customs (and I am refering to both cultural and religious traditions and customs, wich I respect profoundly), should share their rich cultural, social behavior and tradition diversity with eachother so we can all learn and apreehend its own unique identity. Even though, I have a question that needs to be solved: how can we understand different countries, or as Reza Aslan mentioned, different civilizations, such as western civilization and islamic civilization, knowing that, in fact, we are not as equal as we wish we should be - we do have different ways of life, different points of view (other economic other social points of view), different beliefs (even western cicilization has problems on their owns),...?I believe the answer may not be far from this thought: every civilization is made (through several centuries) from what people believed it would be the rightest thing to do in order to preserve teir own identity, their own culture, their own trditions and customs, their own beliefs!So we should all be able to understand and to accept the differences of other civilizations - we can not hide those differences, but we can live with them if we try to do so, peacefully!We can make a small exercise: try to look at your neighbors - they seem all different from eachother and probably it is not so easy to understand and accept their differences; now we can look to the entire world and see that we all share boundries with "neighbor nations" and most likely they might be different from ourselves as well!Just think on this Big Thought!Thank you!

Roberto Monteiro commented on Is there a clash of civilizations? on January 30, 2008, 12:35 AM

I do agree with Reza Aslan's general point of view. Civilization mean people, even different in their traditions and customs (and I am refering to both cultural and religious traditions and customs, wich I respect profoundly), should share their rich cultural, social behavior and tradition diversity with eachother so we can all learn and apreehend its own unique identity. Even though, I have a question that needs to be solved: how can we understand different countries, or as Reza Aslan mentioned, different civilizations, such as western civilization and islamic civilization, knowing that, in fact, we are not as equal as we wish we should be - we do have different ways of life, different points of view (other economic other social points of view), different beliefs (even western cicilization has problems on their owns),...? I believe the answer may not be far from this thought: every civilization is made (through several centuries) from what people believed it would be the rightest thing to do in order to preserve teir own identity, their own culture, their own trditions and customs, their own beliefs! So we should all be able to understand and to accept the differences of other civilizations - we can not hide those differences, but we can live with them if we try to do so, peacefully! We can make a small exercise: try to look at your neighbors - they seem all different from eachother and probably it is not so easy to understand and accept their differences; now we can look to the entire world and see that we all share boundries with "neighbor nations" and most likely they might be different from ourselves as well! Just think on this Big Thought! Thank you!