diversity(2/1)
Heaven is where you love everyone there
A monastery is cohesive; it is not a schismatic society that survives by expelling those who don’t fit into a mold. This difference might be summed up in two versions of heaven I once heard from a Benedictine nun: in one, heaven is full of people you love, and in the other, heaven is where you love everyone who is there.
Europe is split into three cultures
With the exception of America, the melting pot of the earth, one may consider cultures to spread across the globe in a predictable manner; pools of culture that ebb and flow like the ocean. Natural boundaries act as the ocean’s shores, eroded by influence or violent action over the years but generally unchanged. A review of the European continent, when taken from this perspective, would lead the spectator to assume the entire small continent, stretching from Portugal to Ukraine, would share the same cultural distinctions.…
Behavior is comprehensible only within culture
The reasons for a nation’s cultural distinctions are not always decipherable from the actions of its people. From a Western perspective, Eastern culture is formal and backward. Children in China defer to their parents, even as adults, at a level that most children in the United States would compare to slavery. Obedience to one’s government is a standard in China, but in the United States there are rallies and protests against political leaders.…