Affiliation and Cultural Mutual Maturation

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

Ever since his birth, man finds himself in a state of belonging, more precisely in a plethora of multiple affiliations. He is the son of his family, his clan, tribe, race, sect, region and country, of course, apart from the affiliations that he gathers during his social upbringing. But when he becomes an adult, the dimensions of affiliation increase in his life, as he adds to them various affiliations and activities, from the cultural to the political, passing through various types of life choices.

Moreover, affiliation is based on rootedness, and staunch rootedness varies between one affiliation and the other, according to the importance of belongingness to a person, as a person may be strongly attached to his religious affiliation, while another may be strongly attached to his political affiliation. These are life choices that a person adopts, whether in relation to the affiliation that was imposed upon him by birth or the affiliation he chose by his own free will.

But a fact that does not need to be argued is that religious, ethnic, racial, and national affiliations, as well as everything that is related to basic identity, are the affiliations that mostly tighten the nerves of people and make them stand up against each other and enter into deadly and destructive conflicts.

Modern societies are very diverse, especially as a result of international migration as well as of the recruitment of laborers from the world that suffers from financial need to the world that suffers from shortages in the labor force who accepts the hardships of living and working in strenuous professions.

Modern societies may also be very diverse due to historical accumulations of conquests, migrations, and waves of settlement, be they spontaneous or programmed.

To sum up, we find ourselves today faced with a mosaic of cultural diversity unparalleled in human history.

In modern societies, human groups with affiliations and identities that are remotely related "exist" and "coexist", and this despite of the fact that they have lived on the same land for centuries.

Because of the fanaticism that has toughened throughout history, and because of the interaction between heterogeneous groups, either religiously or culturally, groups which have excelled in closing themselves up into seclusion, have succeeded in alienating themselves from other groups to the point of complete estrangement and discordance, a state from which there is no escape.

As we note that ancient societies in human civilization have become a federation of ethnic, racial and religious groups, we are bound to ask ourselves how is it that these people who have lived on the same land for hundreds of years did not come to blend into one and the same entity.

The answer is simple: it is intolerance, discrimination, rejecting the other, accusing him of infidelity, accusing him of prejudice, or affixing him with derogatory tags. This is what human science has recently called "hate speech", a fact that institutions working in the fields of dialogue and human rights are actively fighting against.

The wisdom of the Creator gave people insight, reason and wisdom, enabling them to learn from the lessons of the past and reconsider many practices that history has concurred to abolish.

Humanity today is reconsidering its history by denouncing, criticizing, and appealing to lessons learned from many ancestral practices like conquests and wars, as well as from incarceration, enslavement and the slave trade. It is moreover challenging modern forms of such comportments.

Humanity today, in large part, has embraced the doctrine of equality, human rights, helping the weak, not bickering with those who differ from us, and especially stressing the safeguard of human dignity.

Humanity today is the product of awareness, communication, knowledge, acceptance of difference, openness to the other, and acceptance of the other as he is, without of course subjecting him to be tried or judged, provided the existing law enforcement practices are respected.

Because of all this, we see the emergence of a phenomenon that for more than two decades I termed in Arabic "Tanadoj" which I moreover referred to in Latin languages as “osmo-symbiosis” and which meaning is Mutual Maturation.

Mutual Maturation/Tanadoj occurs when different groups which see themselves on several levels, religious, ethnic and other, living a life with unified interests, unified goals within the framework of one society and one state, under the roof of civil peace guaranteed by the implementation of laws.

Mutual Maturation is an inevitable result of people interacting with one another in their daily lives, acquiring characteristics from one another and sharing a few life practices as well as a few cultural characteristics.

This results in mutual knowledge between these groups, so that neither the customs, nor the traditions nor the mentality of one group is alien or abhorrent to the other groups.

A person belonging to any one group thus annihilates the enmity that he bears to what he is ignorant of in other groups and enters into an atmosphere of respect for the cultural characteristics of others, even if he is not convinced of them.

Knowing the other is half the way towards acceptance or reconciliation. Only then the culture of rejecting discrimination, racism and all kinds of destructive fanaticism will prevail, and any human being will be discredited, and any group will be spurned, when perchance willing to venture into marginalizing any of the components of society.

But this process of mutual maturation needs a set of conditions to ensure its advent, success and endurance.

Such a process of maturation first needs a strong, just and firm state that enforces the law and establishes equality for all. It needs however the guarantee of the following two conditions.

On the one hand it needs the formulation of unified-and-unifying educational curricula that unite the community by bonding the young.

On the other hand, it needs the setting up of an ethically based communication media that seeks civil peace as well as the unity of society.

Moreover, it needs a lasting civil peace that would sustain a climate conducive to maturation, and this in order for the setting up of a social bond replacing the ruptures of society’s zealotry. In other words, it needs the establishment of an all-inclusive social contract replacing any other existing subcontracts.

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