A New Ideal

I live in South Africa, a wonderful country filled with people with all kinds of religions, diets, colours, languages and philosophies. South Africa consists of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims to mention only the blockbuster religions; it has 11 official languages (last time I checked); it is home to Khoi San, Xhosa, Zulu, descendants of the Dutch, descendants of the English,  descendents of the French, and descendants of the Portuguese; and many, many other cultures and peoples.

Living in a society like this, helped me to realize that knowing the difference between right and wrong, is not always an easy process. How do we decide, what is right, when my next door neighbor cannot find it within him to agree with me. And once we reach an impasse, surely it wise the consider that perhaps it IS him that is rights, and not me. Just because I think something is true, doesn't make it any more true that my neighbor's opinion; because to him, he thinks his opinion is true too.

So lately I've been thinking... maybe we need to step outside the boundaries of our own perception of truth, and try and find a new truth. We as a nation have been able to define a legal constitution despite our differences. Perhaps we can do the same thing for morality. Perhaps we can establish a foundation of commonality on which we can build with unified purpose, for the betterment of society.

I believe it is possible to change the world into a better place, by doing the following:

• By focusing on the things what we have in common (philosophically)
• By tolerating what we don't have in common
• By accepting as our own the responsibility for change
• By accepting that others will not accept this responsibility, and not letting their rejection diminish our responsibility
• By building up, instead of breaking down
• By creating... (that's it, just creating)