Such contrasts are semiotically active as variations on identifiable themes. But these variations are precisely non-historical, in the sense that they manifest and often explicitly claim to be manifestations of a natural logic that knowingly fills the gaps between insufficient evidences and urgently needed conclusions by supplementary premisses drawn from causal intuitions, narrative standard patterns, and other available semiotic realia whose relevance is then vividly disputed. Instead of being cases of misunderstanding, such debates simply show comparable stances, differences ascribed to viewpoints based on equal commitment to aspects of human reality as such, not essentially as history, but rather as an ontology of life . Nobody can succesfully justify an act by presenting the history of its agent. This is the meaning of the natural notion of free will.
Intercultural communication is as meaningful as intracultural debates.
It is only agonistic in politics, but generally it is less conflictual and correspondingly more epistemic, since authorities do not regulate it, and issues of freedom are less at stake. A cross-cultural view of states of affairs is perhaps, by contrast to the above, above all an occasion to see how different themes are played with the same variations from culture to culture. Therefore, people can cross-culturally tell each other's stories, import and export narratives, discuss causes of and reasons for others' actions and passions, as well as translate texts from language to language and contribute to each other's knowledge of 'the world'. That there is a 'world' is a natural intuition which communities truly have in common. Meanings as intelligible variations on intelligible themes are deeper than history and can therefore shape it.