I was thinking the other day about cultural identity and what the chances were that one day we might "all just get along". During the wanderings that my mind took through this subject came this quote from Ronald Regan (not exact but to paraphrase) "If the earth ever faced an extra-terrestrial threat then we would unite". One of his more lucid thoughts. Seriously.
Personally there is nothing more that I would like than for all of us to be able to just get along. Not to be the same, but for us all to respect the identities of our various cultures and to be able to co-exist. It won't happen though. There is too much that we let separate us or too much that is enforced separation.
Religion
This is always a biggy. Take the basic faith denominations and divide along those lines. Then take the variants within a faith and divide those. Then take the interpritations of each variant and divide those. Then take the geographical variants and divide those. It looks messy already and we haven't even begun to include the other cultural/socio-economic pressures that go to make all this up yet.
Within the Christian doctrine you have a myriad of denominations - Orthodox (Greek and Russian), Church of England, Methodist, Baptist, Catholic - and none of these can agree on the exact nature of their religion.
Language
The disdain that people from one culture hold for another just along the divide of language is astonishing. Look at the Serbs, Croats, Slavs - basic varients of the same language but miles apart. There is the English and the French.
Economics
How do you unite a world that is so economically unbalanced?
Regional Variation
Even within a country there is the problem of geography. How many Americans who come from one state will poke fun at someone from another?
Politics
Self determination within a countries traditional borders can cause all kinds of tensions (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Indonesia, etc). Then there is the question of political systems themselves
History
Posted by AlexC at March 28, 2006 12:05 PM