Myopia's and Mania's

As one travels among the various people groups and ethnic groups and live and interacts with them, one is amazed by the things we see. One is the diversity of the ethnic groups, and communities. Homo sapiens that we are, are not one uniform color creed or tribe, but multiple groups with so much of diversity and color. And each individual unique in his or her own way. And we need to celebrate this. Celebrate the diversity the uniqueness we see around. As individuals we are unique, as communities we are diverse, but all carrying the common “Imago Dei”.

And these diverse communities, especially the South Asian and South East Asian communities, have a creativity that is amazing. The colors, patterns, food, music, art forms, dance, innovation for daily living, and a long list of creative ways of doing things for daily living and for celebrations. The creativity of the creator as an innate part of our lives!

The other thing one observes is the high social capital among many of these communities. They would come together to build each other and their communities and join in celebrating and caring. This out of fact they are high trust societies. Trust levels among them are high and one can even leave your houses open and walk off not worrying about your belongings. Social capital and trust, closely linked – again emerging from the innate “imago dei” in us.

But there is some countries, regions or cultures an attitude or perspective, what one leader called as “Mono-cultural Myopia”. Usually these countries or regions are mono-cultural and majority community has had not much relationship with other cultures, other than occasional visits of tourists or travel out. Whereby they (we) think their own cultures are superior and all other cultures are seen through these better than them perspectives. And this leads to discrimination and marginalization. I heard a message recently about how Peter had to be broken out of his mono-cultural myopia of his Jewish origins, by a vision where he was asked to eat un-clean animals, and this willingness to break out of the same led to growth of the community or caring and worship in the first century AD. And the preacher asked us this question – if you had such a vision, what would be in the sheet which you will see! Asking us to reflect on our own myopias!

In some other countries we observe a “multi-cultural mania” – whereby multiple cultures exist together but with varied levels of relationships. Each culture brings in their own mono cultural myopias and there is even manic sense of uncomfortable relationship with each other. They tend to be low trust societies, and some of these are part of the religious or cultural values which are part of the society. They co-exist with each other because there are part of the nation or region, and that is what gives them a legal identity, but their core identity is never diluted and the “better than they” or “inferior than them” attitudes are written deeply into their souls! And for the sake of building your own group or the sake of a common task, we either use each other or co-exist with each other – but there is always a limit to openness between various groups. And discrimination and marginalization’s happen if one is not careful, like the Hellenistic widows being ignored by the Hebraic Jews in the first century church. Our country we have enough and more examples of such multicultural mania.

But then today in the urbanizing connected world of the youth there is another phenomenon emerging. The “uni-cultured utopia”. Original cultures forgotten and slowly lost in the emerging globalized world of social networks and communication. It is more evident in urban centers and among the emerging generation and in countries and regions which attract migration for the sake of education or jobs. United by age, connectivity, social networking languages and losing touch with the roots, a uni-culture emerging around these groups.

But in the midst of this the diversity is still there. The diversity of the creation which has to be celebrated, and used to complement the unity emerging. To keep this unity strong move from utopia to reality and not affected by the mono cultural myopia’s or multi-cultural mania’s of the senior generation or others, there need to be a deeper understanding of the “Imago Dei”. Diverse as we are, we are united by this one thing - Image of God in us. 

I need an eye checkup and a mental examination, to see what Myopia I have and what Mania am I living with.