The three primary speakers were John W. Webster of La Sierra University, Atilla Kahveci of the Pacific Institute and Howard K. Wettstein, of UCR. Kahveci spoke first. As a Muslim he contended that all three Abrahamic religions share important values such as honesty, generosity, compassion and kindness. We should build on these, bringing unity out of diversity without destroying it, he held.
Webster, a Christian, contended that first of all Jews, Christians and Muslims must overcome some mutual misunderstandings. Once they do this they will recognize that they have enough in common to collaborate, even on matters of public policy.
Wettstein reflected on his life and work as a Jewish Zionist who is ethically uneasy about Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. He also spoke about his experiences teaching in Palestine and about religion's great power for good and evil. He agreed that it often takes religion to make good people do bad things. It often takes religion to make bad people do good things, he added.
Webster distinguished between "experiential expressivism," on the one hand, and "cultural linguistics," on the other. The first holds that at bottom all people experience life basically the same way even though they express themselves diversely. The second holds that the differences among cultures are so thoroughgoing that finding experiential common ground beneath them is difficult.
The intercultural stratigies of these two groups differ correspondingly. The first attempts to identitfy views and values people share and build upon them. Regarding this as an unsuccessful and undesirable enterprise, the second attempts to find methods by which people can interact in mutually acceptable patterns even though they experience life in fundamentally different ways. Diversity, even in this radical form, should be viewed as something positive, he held.
It is at this point in such discussions that my mind returns to cultural and culinary diversity and how they might be analogous. The number of different things people around the world eat is incredibly vast, so much so that we might be tempted to think that we can eat anything can get away with it. Yet we know that this is not so.
It is true that there are some things that some of us can eat and others can't and vice versa: nevertheless, whether they do so slowly or swiftly, if we eat them some things will kill each and everyone of us without regard to factors such as race, religion and society. Although we ingest nothing that is fataly toxic, we will also die if we our diets do not include certain basic nutritional necessities. Culinary diversity is great and good, but it is not limitless. At some point it stops. This is a description, not a prescription. It is the way things actually are whether or not we think they ought to be.
We can say some similar about cultural diversity. It is incredibly and delightfully vast; however, speaking descriptively, it has its limits. Cultures can arrange their lives in self-destructive ways, as the study of human history amply demonstrates. Also, there are certain fundamental human needs that all cultures must provide. If they don't, these societies will die just as certainly as those whose diets do not provide their basic nutritional needs.
Over long periods of time we have learned what each culture must avoid and what it must provide, just as we have learned what we must not eat and what we must. All cultures need to develop ways for different generations to relate to each responsibly and respectfully. They must figure out how to identify and protect property. Although they differ in how they define unjustifiable homcide, all cultures must find some way to protect human life. Likewise, they must figure out how to encourage people to speak truthfully, especially about issues of great significance. And they must learn how to prevent envy from escalating into destructive class warfare. This usually means that they must not let the gap between the rich and poor get too wide.
We know what at minimum each culture must and must not do to survive and flourish. We know that these requirements have long been summarized in ethical mandates such as the Ten Commandments. We also know that it is dangerous for any individual or group to ignore these basics needs. The parallels between cultural and culinary diversity are almost exact.