“Find what you love.
Do what you believe is great work.
Keep looking. Don’t settle.”

A very inspiring speech of Steve Jobs (Apple Computers)!

As a European I could say that “all Asians look alike”. This ‘other group’ that I am not familiar with looks like one homogenous group. But if an Asian would say he cannot keep me apart from this other person from my country or continent, I might be surprised. “Don’t you see the differences between us: our accents, our clothes, our social backgrounds, the sports we play, the newspapers we read, our religion, our hobbies, …?”.  All these aspects put together make who I am, in a unique way. There will be probably nobody else who combines all these different identities.

So why do we so often forget that people from the other group are also made of so many different identities, and that if they are from Morocco, they are more than for example their religion. They are a combination of their social background, the sport they practice, the kind of books they like to read, the number of brothers and sisters they have…

If we meet a person from this other rather unfamiliar group, even if they live in the same country as ours, it can help to know something about his culture to grasp the differences between us in a general way. Even if we don’t always like it: we need some kind of framework, boxes, to understand the world. But we should try the framework to be hybrid, so there is space for other aspects and colours … and to be surprised!

Earlier this week I heard Halleh Ghorashi speak in a lecture “Give Space to Diversity”. She is a Iranian-Dutch woman and has a refreshing approach to integration in the Netherlands.

In an entry in May 2007 I already mentioned the concept of hybrid (connected to progress) shortly. Halleh Ghorashi focuses on this concept in the context of realising that a person is not just a blind carrier of his culture, but makes liaisons between the cultures that he or she encorporates (this reminds me of “Identités Meutrières” of the French-Libanese author Amin Maalouf).
Democracy, she says, means giving space to the minority, giving space to being different, to being a cultural hybrid. We cannot move ahead if we see the other as ‘the absolute other’: this leaves nothing in common and no way to connect. Due to Dutch history Dutch people are still used, onconsiously maybe, to put groups of people in boxes (it’s only 50 years ago that people from protestant and catholic societies would not mix).

In a training on Deep Democracy a while ago I learned about giving voice to the minority and realising that the minority holds a part of the wisdom of the whole group. In the context of Dutch integration it would mean realising that former migrants are as much part of Dutch society as the ‘autochtone Dutch’ are and that they hold a part of the wisdom of our shared society. Weneed to build the present and future together to be able to move ahead in a consructive way.

…more about this soon, I hope!…

The road they travel is important “because every step brings us closer towards encountering the other. That is why we are on the road in the first place.”
A quote from The Other – Ryszard Kapuscinski, which summarises my travelspirit. I promised months ago to write about this book, but it was only traveling myself again (finally), that I found the words.

One part about traveling is ofcourse seeing the beautiful landscapes and cities, seeing it for yourself… But to me the essence about traveling is about the people I meet. The reason to travel somewhere is almost always to meet a friend and visit his home country. But I have rarely left on a trip to meet a friend, without meeting someone, with whom I became ‘friends’ and visit this person a next time. The reason I want to travel is not just to find my next traveldestination, it is the meeting itself, the unexpectedness of the meeting, the new insights, views.

As a traveler you seem to have some kind of priviliege to talk to anyone, on the street, on the bus, at the trainstation, in a bar. Sometimes to ask the way to the trainstation, but more often just to get to know the other a little bit. The first question seems to be very often: Where are you from? (which is ofcourse not as easy as it sounds). Co-travelers will be more than happy to talk, because they are also on the road. But even locals will open up easily, much easier than if you had been a Local Stranger. As if Foreign Strangers are more harmless than the person you don’t know who lives next door.

It would be interesting to find a way to use this innocent approach to the other for people in your own community. But in the meantime, I try to keep this travelspirit, meeting people I don’t know, by hosting travelers through couchsurfing. It’s amazing how many people from really all over the world contacted me within a week, asking to surf my couch. You really have to be carefull not to become a budget hotel, or actually a free hotel, but it keeps you on the road, even being at home!

Just arrived in Dutch bookstores:

I waited for this book since December. It finally got to the bookstores 10 days ago. When I bought it, I coulnd’t wait until I got home. The weather was too good to sit inside anyway, so I enjoyed a nice coffee on a sunny terrace to go with my book.

More about the content of this collection of essays on The Other soon!

I have written before on the campaign on prevention of terrorism in the Netherlands, which is exclusive, in a way, or which misuses feelings of fear. Eurotopics found another inspiring article, in Die Presse this time, which explains in a ‘beautiful’ way the difference between peace and security…

“The European behaved as if this war wasn’t taking place in Europe, as if it had nothing to do with him. …You yearn for peace, but we don’t want to give you any of our peace, Europeans tell those who risk their lives to come here. Yet you can’t own peace. It’s not a thing, it’s a state. I come across the word ’security’, unlike the word ‘peace’, on a daily basis. … The word ’security’ is not a word that promotes peace. It’s a word that excludes.”

I wrote about remembrance a few days ago, not knowing how to “deal” with that, in an intercultural or even holistic way. I didn’t mean I don’t respect the memories of people. It’s more about the way a government for example organises remembrance-events. And I am looking for approaches that don’t narrow down the memory to a static black-and-white picture, but which open the space and open it towards the future.
My favorite international press-translator Eurotopics wrote about the Belgian researcher Valerie Rosoux and her view on the guilt or non-guilt of nations and their past. She quotes a French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, who also has a very interesting view on guilt and appologies. I’m trying to get hold on his book about History and Memory, and will get back to you when I do and read it!
When I’ll get back to you, I hope to be able to say something about “giving a future to memory”.

For Valérie Rosoux, nations are not guilty of their pasts
[...]“For some philosophers, such as Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur, forgiveness is not necessarily private and individual, it can also take on political proportions. From this point of view, forgiveness is the only way to reopen memory without triggering resentment or the desire for revenge. Its objective is neither to add salt to a wound that cannot be healed, nor to rub out memories. …
Far from wiping out the past, forgiveness acts upon it. It is an attempt to modify it by giving it another meaning. … Making official apologies cannot ‘repair’ damage suffered by individuals who have been affected in their flesh, or among their near and dear, but it can help relieve the pain of their wounds and in so doing give a future to memory.” (26/02/2008)    

An article on Eurotopics made me think about remembrance again.
I am a historian, but I´m not sure about the use of rememberance yet, as you may have read on this blog before.
Studying history is about understanding the past, and being aware that our understanding is coloured by the perspective from our own worldview. It will never really be objective, but it can be rational.
Remembering seems first of all to be about emotions. But there must be more than being `stuck in the past’ or bonding a group or nation through a collective memory. Can we unite with others, who don’t share the same memory and move ahead down a new road together? Can remembering ever be an intercultural activity?
When I google ‘remembrance’, I read about awareness. Is that the ‘outward’ purpose of remembering? And can it be inclusive?

this inner source

What is that place where we really connect, I have been asking myself before. And how do you move ahead from there?
This Theory U of Otto Scharmer might be an answer to my question. It’s a very inspirational way of working, because you have to connect to your socalled inner source of knowing.
If you are interested, please read this Facilitator’s guide, made by a wonderful woman, Sofia!

This moring I read a lecture of Ryszard Kapuscinski on Encoutering the Other. I just found the English translation on the internet. He starts with a historical overview of how the earliest human groups discovered there were other people in the world, and how to behave:

“The discovery that there are other people in the world! [...] Then it turned out that [...] other similar beings, other people, also inhabited the world! But how to behave in the face of such a revelation? What to do? What decision to make?
[1. war] Should they throw themselves in fury on those other people?
It might end up in a duel, a conflict or a war. Proof of man’s failure—that he did not know how, or did not want, to reach an understanding with Others.
[2. building walls] Or walk past dismissively and keep going?
This family-tribe decides to fence itself off from others, to isolate and separate itself. This attitude leads, over time, to objects like the Great Wall of China, the towers and gates of Babylon, the Roman limes and or the stone walls of the Inca.
[3. dialogue] Or rather try to get to know and understand them?”
There is [..] proofs of cooperation—the remains of marketplaces, of ports, of agoras and sanctuaries, of seats of old universities and academies, and of where there remain vestiges of trade routes. All of these were places where people met to exchange thoughts, ideas and merchandise, and where they traded and did business, concluded covenants and alliances, and discovered shared goals and values. “The Other” stopped being a synonym of foreignness and hostility, danger and mortal evil. People discovered within themselves a fragment of the Other, and they believed in this and lived confidently.”

It is so simple, but it really helps me to see how different countries deal with the fear for the “new unknown”, the islam, in the case of many westerners. The US choosing to fight, the Netherlands choosing to build walls around the country. And then the third option, the one I and many others favor.