Reading different viewpoints on terrorism has been very enlightening for me. I hadn't really taken the time before to understand other points of view on why terrorist attacks happen. I just knew that I did not agree with what was being said by mainstream American media. Because of my lack of trust in what is being said by most newscast and a feeling of overwhelm, I have taken the approach of tuning out as much as possible. Catching some headlines from the news page on my computer or listening to public radio when I am in the car has been the extent of my news gathering.
In his writing "The Clash of Civilizations" Samuel Huntington states "For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilizations, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist as Huntington says we need to educate ourselves about who these "other" people are. This knowing needs to be on deeper level than the biases and judgments that tend to have us making up our minds about someone before we have even found out their name.
It is so easy to make up a story about someone and why they deserve to be judged in an unjust way when we don't know them as a human being. As long as we keep our distance and continue to believe
our story lines we can feel o.k. about the cruelty happening to those others. In saying this I realize that I need to do more to change this pattern in myself as well. Instead of shutting out information I may not want to hear, I need to learn more about peoples stories and remember we are all human beings doing what we feel is best.
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