A little tidbit which I thought of recently
It's weird how sometimes you overlook the most obvious things, isn't it?
I'm an Israeli atheist raised in a vaguely Jewish family and I go to a Christian school in England. It's weird seeing those cultures mixed up...I knew very little about Jesus, or really about Christian teaching, before year 7, yet having sung in a choir I can relate to things which poke fun at churches and perhaps the Anglican tradition in general. I'm quite happy to poke fun at Jewish mothers, then immediately start laughing at the English stereotypes I can relate to (pretty much all of them, then, except I don't like tea).
It comes to mind that I wouldn't have been able to link all this were it not for the fact that I grew up in a multicultural society. If I'd never come to England, or if I'd rejected one set of traditions altogether, I'd never have understood some of the things I do today. It's a bit of a random argument for multiculturalism, I guess - opening your mind isn't something that most people would come up with on the first try - but to me it's an important one. If you intentionally close your mind to seeing someone else's ideas, you're going to lead a very culturally impoverished life. You won't be able to see links between things or hop effortlessly from one subject to another - instead, you'll be stuck in the same narrow rut. That's fine for the oiks and anti-intellectuals of the world, I guess, but not for anyone who wants to hold a genuinely interesting conversation.
I'm an Israeli atheist raised in a vaguely Jewish family and I go to a Christian school in England. It's weird seeing those cultures mixed up...I knew very little about Jesus, or really about Christian teaching, before year 7, yet having sung in a choir I can relate to things which poke fun at churches and perhaps the Anglican tradition in general. I'm quite happy to poke fun at Jewish mothers, then immediately start laughing at the English stereotypes I can relate to (pretty much all of them, then, except I don't like tea).
It comes to mind that I wouldn't have been able to link all this were it not for the fact that I grew up in a multicultural society. If I'd never come to England, or if I'd rejected one set of traditions altogether, I'd never have understood some of the things I do today. It's a bit of a random argument for multiculturalism, I guess - opening your mind isn't something that most people would come up with on the first try - but to me it's an important one. If you intentionally close your mind to seeing someone else's ideas, you're going to lead a very culturally impoverished life. You won't be able to see links between things or hop effortlessly from one subject to another - instead, you'll be stuck in the same narrow rut. That's fine for the oiks and anti-intellectuals of the world, I guess, but not for anyone who wants to hold a genuinely interesting conversation.
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