This may hold for cultures as a whole. But not all aspects of all cultures are worth learning. Rationalizations of violence, repression, and exploitation are also parts of cultures. The result being that the believer may be hard pressed for an answer that convinces himself, leave alone the outsider. Yes, in your recently published book Peace by Peaceful Means , you advocate a new approach to the study of cultures and mention that since culture is relevant to violence and peace, the time has come to evaluate cultures without assuming equality and perhaps even to create a new area of study to do this, the science of human culture, culturology .
Culture is something dynamic that can be shaped by studying and mastering it.
The key here is dialogue, the dialogue des civilizations , not as something carried out for mutual information, or once and for all by some key spokespersons, but for everybody on earth to participate in shaping cultures for active coexistence. Article copyright 1996 by the author.