Seeking to Understand

It’s rant time, people!

#1: Have any of you ever heard the phrase “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?” I think you need to study up and figure out what that means and how it applies to me and iApp-a-Day - it’s wise advice…

#2: This next issue is more important. Ste (world-famous iPhone package maintainer extraordinaire) has apparently been getting some nasty emails from folks about hosting Mobile Holy Quran. Seriously?

First of all, I wrote the software for Zoosware and I happen to think it’s some pretty sweet stuff, technically. No, I’m not a Muslim. And yes, I am American/Christian. Shocked? Some people apparently are.

The shock goes both ways: I’ve been told that Muslims are often stunned to find out that a non-Muslim American wrote it and it impresses many of them. You see, their world is filled with the same misconceptions about ours as ours is with misconceptions about theirs. Interesting, isn’t it? There’s people on both sides of this divide that feel they are superior or more “right” than the others - and the truth is that neither set of extremists represents the vast majority of normal people stuck in the middle.

Extremists keep people apart. Extremists are against open communication. Extremists would rather believe their own specific fiction than know a real truth. Christian extremists, Muslim extremists, nationalistic extremists, racial extremists, etc. All are guilty of driving people apart.

Interestingly, I do believe that extremists have their place in society. We need them - but their usefulness as a whole is limited and not perpetual. Extremists help shake things up and cause the masses to question long-held (and often incorrect) assumptions. This is good for everyone and when we come back together again, we grow as a species and as a culture - but it is not healthy to maintain an extremism in the same way that it is not healthy to drink soda and eat potato chips for every meal. Moderation is important to maintaining health mentally, physically, and spiritually.

I believe that the time for religious extremism is globally coming to a close. The world is much smaller than it used to be. It’s far easier to communicate. The normal people that the extremists have been trying in vain to “protect” from each other on each side are starting to find ways to come together, meet, understand, and accept one another for who they are as individuals. It’s a slow process, for sure, but I think it proves a fundamental point about humanity: we need each other and there’s some underlying force of nature that constantly strives to bring us back together after a rift develops. That force goes by many names - but in my opinion, the name is just an attempt to make concrete something which is, presently, very mysterious and unknowable about life.

Think about it… It was not so long ago that the world was caught up in war. There was so much hate and mistrust that the US eventually dropped the mother of all bombs on Japan. And where are we now? Japan and the US have great relations. Most of Europe gets along quite well now - perhaps better than they ever have before. Only a few decades ago the hate being thrown at Muslims by some in my country was being directed to the Japanese, or the Germans, or the Italians, or the Russians and they thought and believed that it would always be that way and that it would always be socially acceptable to hate another culture.

They were wrong then.

They are wrong now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 9:10 am and is filed under Rants, iappaday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.