[lit-ideas] Armatya Sen. SoS?????? Interesting anyway.
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:28:45 -0500
I have rejected the idea that we are involved in a war of Civilizations or
Cultures or Religions or any other grandiose schema from day one of The World
Trade Towers Attack. Nothing since that time has changed my mind. We're not
fighting Islam, or Islamists, we're fighting people who fear us and whom we
fear in turn .
I read the following in the Washington Post today and send it only because it
says more eloquently how I feel about the current War On Terror and our
xenophobia.
"Here, in contrast [to Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington with
his celebrated theory of the "clash of civilizations."], is Sen celebrating the
complexity of human identity: "The same person can be, without any
contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry,
a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a
historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer
in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis
fan, a jazz musician," etc. One's civilizational identity is not one's destiny,
Sen observes, and civilizational "partitioning" -- seeing the planet culture by
culture -- does not capture the messiness of the world. This Earth of ours, he
says, is made more "flammable" by warring definitions of human identity, rather
than an embrace of the many different facets that make us human."
Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University
quoted from his latest book "Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny."
Mike Geary
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