A Global Village but Still Divided

BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN NIGERIA

HAVE you ever heard stories of a race of people who had no mouth and therefore could neither eat nor drink? They were said to survive by smelling, mostly apples. A bad odor would kill them.

There were also tales of a West African people who had gold to trade. A Portuguese ship’s captain of the time reported: “Two hundred leagues beyond [the] kingdom of [Mali], one finds a country the inhabitants of which have the heads and teeth of dogs and tails like dogs. These are the Blacks who refuse to enter into conversation because they do not wish to see other men.” Those were some of the strange ideas that were held many years ago, before the age of travel and discovery.

Peoples Come Together

Such stories were taken seriously for centuries. But as explorers charted the planet, they found no mouthless apple smellers, no dog-headed people. Today there remains little mystery about those who live beyond our borders. The world has become a global village. Television brings foreign lands and peoples into our living rooms. Air travel makes it possible to visit those lands within hours; millions of people do so each year. Others are on the move for economic or political reasons. States a report of the United Nations Population Fund: “On a scale unknown in history—and certain to grow—people around the world are uprooting themselves and migrating in search of a better life.” About 100 million people live outside the country in which they were born.

Increasingly there is economic interdependency among nations. A global communications network, like a gigantic central nervous system, links every nation of the earth. As ideas, information, and technology are exchanged, cultures merge and adapt to one another. Throughout the world people dress more alike than ever before. Cities of the world share much in common—police, luxury hotels, traffic, stores, banks, pollution. Thus, as the peoples of the world come together, we witness what some describe as an emerging world culture.

Why People Remain Divided

But while peoples and cultures intermingle, clearly not all see one another as brothers. “Everyone’s quick to blame the alien,” wrote a Greek playwright over 2,000 years ago. Sadly, the same is true today. The evidence is no farther away than newspaper reports of bigotry, hatred of foreigners, “ethnic cleansing,” racial strife, religious riots, massacre of civilians, killing fields, rape camps, torture, or genocide.

Of course, most of us can do little or nothing to change the course of ethnic conflicts. We may not even be directly affected by them. For many of us, however, problems come from a lack of communication with the foreigners with whom we come into contact—neighbors, workmates, or schoolmates.

Does it not seem odd that people of differing ethnic groups so often find it difficult to trust and appreciate one another? After all, ours is a planet of enormous diversity, endless variety. Most of us appreciate the rich variety of food, music, and color as well as the many kinds of plants, birds, and animals. But somehow our appreciation of variety does not always carry over to people who do not think and act in the same way that we do.

Instead of looking at the positive aspects of diversity among peoples, many tend to focus on the differences and make them a point of contention. Why is this so? What benefit is there in reaching out to people whose culture differs from our own? How might we break down walls to communication and replace them with bridges? The following articles will endeavor to answer those questions.