Love and respect for All, No one left out. A daunting prospect.
When i came up with this as a definition for the ethos of interculturalism, I had all the reasons why it was not possible come flooding into my mind. Human beings are predispositioned towards negativity and only think of themselves and other like minded theories filled my thought patterns.
Yet as my time spent at Darebin intercultural Centre grew i kept seeing examples of why this was not necessarily factual. People were being educated about each others cultures through, Film, Food , Dance and other aspects of each person's unique way of life. I saw time and time again people giving up their held values about "those people" that they had learnt from mainstream media and T.V. as they actually met people first hand from different cultures.
They got to see that they loved their families, had the same aspirations for their children, loved to cook, play and dance to music just as much as they did. This is when the thought ' What if this was the way people related to each other across the planet, how different a world we would live on. I starting talking to the people who worked at the centre with me and the patrons and they could see the possibility too.
So I have set up an open Facebook group called Interculturalism so that people can make their statement that they support this way of living. It means you have to forgive and love everybody, especially yourself, because it starts at home and then you can go out into the world and share it with others.
