~Gunfire scatters citizens across a market square as they run head on into a freshly detonated bomb. Shouting matches lead to pushing and shoving between parents at a school board meeting. A church preacher burns a holy book. An idealistic boy in a town square hurls a rock in an act of civil disobedience as a woman runs into a hotel lobby crying rape. These are all scenes from recent media coverage, cataloging outbursts of violence here at home as well as across the globe. It is hard to believe that any society would try to promote violence as a lifestyle of choice, but for many people living in culturally diverse regions, violence comes with the territory.
~The desire to live in a zone free of racial hostilities and daily violence is a cultural preference that cuts across all cultural, ethnic, tribal, and racial divisions. Advocating a violent and turbulent environment as a lifestyle choice runs against a Darwinian need to protect and promote subsequent generations of citizens. But in the spring of 2011, the causal relationship between cultural diversity and recurring hostility is evident across the globe. Armed conflict, once confined as routine to historically turbulent zones, surges within formerly peaceful communities.
~From U.S. immigrant populations in an economically strapped community in Indiana, to citizen activists of the “Arab Spring” uprisings across the Middle East, as well as uncontrolled violence in the Ivory Coast, the act of sustaining and promoting one popular or indigenous culture over another requires protective measures. Protection, however, implies the defensive tactics employed to achieve a “hostility-free zone”. Therefore weapons, and the desire or preference to use them to protect or promote one group of civilians against the other, becomes an unyielding element in each conflict. Can cultural diversity be maintained when a citizenry wields guns and ammo? The Constitutional right to bear arms is protected here in the U.S.; can we say the right to cultural diversity is as well protected?
~Fully Automated America (Current TV) describes U.S. "gun culture", and compares the use of weapons within and outside the restrictions of the law. Guns are employed “to keep the peace” by police patrolling the streets. Civilians guarding their own properties do so armed. But what happens when property lines converge into whole communities? In Indiana, Hispanic immigrants express their fear of hostilities aimed at what non-Hispanic members of their community portray as an invading culture. Police and civilians use methods within the confines of the law to repel the “invasion” of one culture by another, behind the façade of immigration law. One culture seeks to remain dominant rather than embrace diversity. Meanwhile, the Indiana Center for Cultural Exchange promotes cross cultural tolerance and cooperation programs like that of the USport program in Lebanon.
~In Europe and North Africa, a decision to militarily aid a resolution to the Libyan crisis has an underlying theme, according to E.J. Dionne on NBC Meet the Press(April3,2011), fear of a mass wave of Libyan immigrants into France and other countries with former colonial ties to North Africa. Cultural diversity is seen as a threat to community peace. The true nature of the conflict in Libya is anybody’s guess, but it is clear each side wishes to protect a zone free of hostilities for those of their own culture. And the defense contractors behind all sides of the equation are willing to help them achieve this “peace” by force.
~So is cultural diversity a civil right? Do the benefits of opening gates outweigh the need to keep them closed? Can a society exist in a homogenous vacuum or is a diversity of genes and cultures a benefit that cannot be denied? Evolutionary and biological science would respond with resounding applause for diversity. But science has the benefit of remaining free of a political agenda within the science itself, even though it continually collides with cultural and religious beliefs. A free society is strengthened by its diversity and tends to erode or explode when diverse groups are restricted from moving freely within the society.
~Globalization and technology has provided citizens of the world with a choice to “freely move about the cabin”. (Except in the case of North Korean, Cuba, and American travelers wishing to enter Cuba). The desire to exercise free will remains the main impetus for people uprooting themselves from one culture to enter the realm of another, even at the risk of being exploited or met with hostility.
~The territorial imperative compels one group to protect itself from the invasion of another. Therefore, the presence of diverse cultures in one particular region will always have the potential for conflict. The key to avoiding that conflict is overcoming rigid orthodoxy with a flexible willingness to compromise and share the best qualities each culture has to offer, while trying to tolerate the worst. The desire to live in a hostile-free zone is shared by all. When a culture gets their arms around that concept, the need to bear arms diminishes. Life threatening violence does not exist without the choice for a life sustaining alternative – peace.
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