Witoubou Newmai
How do we garner capacities to perceive harmony amid ethnic or communal discords? This question is asked because room for discords is bound to prevail as uniformity is impossible. As such is the reality, it is time to identify and ignore those ‘illusions’ which can be invoked for the sole goal of divisions, strife and discords.
Discords prevail when one’s limited horizon veils everything beyond. In reality, one’s life is also determined by factors beyond that horizon. This is the reason for contradictions and difficulties within the given horizon. Unless one acknowledges those shared values one cannot do much in this interconnected world. When we say shared values, it is also to imply that issues should be resolved through consensus, and not through contention.
As the world continues to shrink and intensifies to operate as a connected platform, it is becoming more difficult to remain in isolation. Today there is hardly anyone who is not affected by the paradigmatic changes of the world. As policies of one country affect another country, and that, everyone is becoming more and more a billiard ball among the many rolling billiard balls in the playing global board.
Given the challenges and demands, and as most of the issues are becoming progressively global in essence impacting the ebb of the 'local', it is extremely important that one explores ways for multidimensional 'interaction’.
The British political scientist David Jonathan Andrew Held said that Internet and modern transport systems have “provided a remarkable increase in the infrastructure of horizontal and lateral communication capacity within and across borders”. These new developments link “nations and peoples in new ways”. He pointed out that there were 70 million international tourists in 1960, while in 1994 there were nearly 500 million. Intermarriages have also increased to manifolds. As such, according to David Held, “the capacity of national political leaders to sustain a national culture has become more complex and difficult”. Now the question is—How do we mediate one’s case and situation in a time such as this?
As the ‘phenomena’ are global, which are assaulting the ‘local’ with increasing forces by the day; we can no longer make our ideas confined to the ‘local’. How do we go in ‘sync’ with the global ‘phenomena’ should be a considered question more than almost anything else, so that we are not left behind.
Enlarging our horizons is imperative if we are to go in sync with the trend. The alternative is contradiction, misunderstanding, tension, stagnation and isolation.
In his book, The Lies That Bind—Rethinking Identity, Kwame Anthony Appiah says, “When it comes to the compass of our concern and compassion, humanity as a whole is not too broad a horizon”. He then adds succinctly, “We live with 7 billion fellow humans on a small, warming planet. The cosmopolitan impulse that draws on our common humanity is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity”.
The above presentation does not mean to give a subtle assertion to imply that injustices meted out by the powers that be or the situations of the suppressed groups should be ignored. The whole point is about how one mediates the paradigmatic changes and navigates through the labyrinthine situations, while, at the same time, addressing the "local" issues without departing from “our common humanity”.
