Defending our culture depends on our ability to identify who is its enemy and who is its friend. The more quickly we can determine if a visitor is tainted with values incompatible with our culture's, the easier it becomes to close the doors and call up our cache of weapons to be used in its defense. With so many varieties of people coming from different cultures, the job of identifying undesirable would be almost impossible without resorting to a simplified, though not always correct, method of categorizing people -- stereotyping. While still at a distance, a person exhibiting any qualities of a particular stereotype will be classified as friendly or hostile, and we will open or close our doors depending on that classification. And when those deemed hostile insist on banging on our doors or striking at our cultural walls, we will use violence to terrorize them into leaving us and our value systems alone. We use terrorism as a means of self-actualization.
The sad part of using terrorism is how it seduces good people, with good intentions and charitable beliefs, into using violence as a means of maintaining their moral values. And sadder yet, much of that violence is aimed at a stereotyped group or person that if looked at more closely would reveal an ability to add quality to the life of the ones doing the stereotyping. Conversely, those they stereotype as being friendly often carry subtle but destructive concepts deep into the host culture, without a hint of suspicion by the culture's members.
For example, this happens when religious groups stereotype on the basis of whether something or someone fits their theology, rather than looking deeper to delineate between what is good and evil. Thus, many great truths found in art by other religious or secular artists are rejected outright, while bad art and bad theology is often embraced with open arms because it falls under the label of someone's personal beliefs. With their abundance of stereotypes, many Fundamentalist religious groups will reject a person with deep faith in God and a giving spirit simply because he or she smokes and drinks, but they will then pay homage to a "great" believer among them who gained wealth through immoral business practices. Even today many wars based on religious differences continue to rage because of stereotypes that are as old as the religions that hold them. Because they base their value on the culture of the faith in which they worship rather than on the teachings of their God, many well-meaning Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists extend the hand of terrorism rather than the hands of grace and peace to other hurting people in this world.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Saturday, August 28th 2010 at 2:14PM
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