Celebrating Diversity public lecture by the Iranian intellectual Ramin Jahanbegloo
Moderator: Ivan Krastev
‘No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive,’ said Mahatma Gandhi. Today, no one is untouched by the impact of diversity in our world. Cultural diversity has become our everyday reality. The world has some 6000 communities and as many distinct languages. Such vast difference naturally leads to diversity of vision, beliefs, values and practice. Progress in mass communication and transport technology in today’s world has enabled us to overcome geographical boundaries and being inter-linked to such an extent that a local carnage in Rwanda or a bomb explosion in Baghdad has an immense impact on an ordinary citizen in Spain, in Japan or in Australia. Therefore, globalization is not just about an extension of market principles or an increase in capital flows. It is also about the cross-border flow of ideas that affect cultural diversity… The question is neither to idealize nor to reject the ‘other’. We must overcome deformations that usually go under the name of ‘Orientalism’ or ‘Occidentalism’, because the celebration of diversity is an antidote to terror wars and culture clashes….