Solution to clash of values/31 october 2009

Solution to clash of values/31 october 2009


Solution to clash of values (To live in peace and harmony)

SayaNyein 23Sep.04

culture is social glue which binds communities to live in peace and harmony

Iraq is very much in turmoil after the occupation of western forces.
The world has become a better and safer place?
It’s a very big question mark.


Mixed sensation of cold and warm is felt in this place called Pyin Oo Lwin alias May Myo.
The weather is rather cold this September, but reports of forest fires in Borneo and Sumatra make me sweating. All over the world people are worrying about “global warming”. A group of researchers recently warned that merely planting trees is not enough to prevent global warming.’ Developing nations’ want economic progress at any cost to the environment.
Rich western nations prefer ‘sustainable economic growth’. ‘Idealists and Environmental Fanatics’ want what we call ‘Zero Environmental Impact(ZEI). This is an example of ‘clash of values’.
In this article I’ll propose a solution to the problem of ‘clash of values’.
We are now four years in the 21st, century. Berlin wall had been broken down. Soviet empire or so- called evil empire had collapsed. Cold war had ended. The bipolar world has turned into multi-polar world. Iraq is very much in turmoil after the occupation of western forces. The world has become a better and safer place? It’s a very big question mark.
New problems arise. You may agree or disagree; there is one good point of communist system. It suppresses ‘religious fanaticism and ultra nationalism’. Ultra nationalism tends to break up communities which formerly live in harmony. One of the causes of social fragmentation is clash of cultures and value systems. In Bosnia, it is clash of Christian and Islamic cultures. In middle-east, the clash is between Jewish and Islamic cultures. In Kashmir, the conflict is between Hindu and Islamic.
Because of jet-travels and instant communication via many global networks such as CNN and Internet, the world seems to become relatively “smaller”, and looks like a “big village” where every event (big or small) is seen and heard by everybody. The word “global village” is coined to describe this phenomenon .Suitable culture for global village should be all-embracing ‘multiculturalism’. Definition of “culture” according to a dictionary is “all the arts, beliefs, and social institutions etc., “Characteristics of a community”. In fact culture is social glue which binds communities to live in peace and harmony. The concept of ‘multiculturalism’ is invented for new world order. I would like the reader to get a glimpse of the idea “multiculturalism” from a poem composed by a renown poet, Derek Walcott. Walcott is a west-Indian-born poet. He represented his “identity-card” in the following poem:
“I’m just a red nigger who loves the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger and English in me,
And either I’m nobody or I’m a one-man nation “.
He’s right. The true poet is a one-man nation. He was born and brought up in multicultural environment. That environment made him into what he called “an elated, exuberant poet madly in love with English”. Walcott believes that blacks must “Take in the fact of slavery without bitterness, because bitterness is going to lead to the fatality of thinking in terms of revenge”. If we continue to sulk and say “Look ! what the slave owners (British Colonialist) did”, we will never mature. Throughout history nations conquered other nations in building empires. Empires prospered, declined and collapsed. The conquerors imposed their cultures on the defeated people. In the beginning the clashes of cultures were inevitable. Gradually cultures of the conquerors took root in the new environment, which might be either slightly or very different from the original ones. For example, the British colonial zed India and imposed English language on the Indians. (Imposition of language is some sort of cultural domination). But the English spoken in India is very much different from that spoken by the British.
Old languages mix up and new forms of languages appear. Old languages, institutions, cultures die. New cultures and new values are born. High-tech culture, western culture, Islamic culture are a few examples. Intermarriages of people of different races and cultures are very common all over the world. The world becomes a “melting point” of races and cultures.
If we want to survive as individuals or as a nation, we must change our outlooks and lifestyles, and adopt multiculturalism.
Of course I love Myanmar. Also it is a fact that I’m a global-villager.
I see myself as a “global citizen”. That’s the future of the world. I’m a villager in “global village”.
I praise and practice multiculturalism.


SayaNyein