Beyond Ignorance and Understanding

http://www.readingt.readingcities.com/index.php/toronto/comments/12857/

Not long ago, I wrote that we clash cultures while the world plunges
to climate-change hell in burning hand-baskets.

Sure there might be some hoping for the future -- if only human beings
bothered understanding cultural principles and ideologies better.
Cultural principles and ideologies defining who people are -- and who
the enemies of the people are. Because then, just maybe, we might
start bridging gaps between ourselves and cultural others by discourse
-- rather than plugging them with bullets.

But better understanding is not enough. If cultural ignorance of self
and others escalates conflicts, let's absolutely struggle against
ignorance. What to do, though, when hatred precedes mis-understanding?
When the hatred precedes and surpasses all ignorance? When we set out
to genocide cultural others -- knowing full-well what we set out to
do?

That's what I was confronted with on Thursday while at York
University. How hatred has a life and death wish all its own.
Surpassing both ignorance and understanding.