“We cannot hide the differences that exists among various faiths and neither can we hope to replace existing faiths by a universal belief. Each religion has its own distinctive qualities and contributions to make and each in its own way is suitable to a particular group of people.”
The Dali Lama
Universal Responsibility and the Good Heart
"These other peoples of the world aren't failed attempts at being modern, or failed attempts at being us. On the contrary, by definition they're unique manifestations of the human heart, the human imagination. When asked the meaning of being human, they respond with 6,000 different voices."
Wade Davis
All human populations share the same raw human genius, the same intellectual acuity . And so whether that genius is placed into technological wizardry, the great achievement of the West, or by contrast by unraveling the complex threads of memory inherent in a myth, is simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation There is progression of affairs in human experience. there is no pyramid that places Victorian England at the apex and descends down the flanks to the so-called primitives of the world. All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions of life itself."
-Wade Davis
Every culture has its own rituals, acceptable drugs, preferred foods, stories and foundational myths. Consciousness is shaped by language, architecture and space, body image, objects and possessions, mass media, music and the rhythms of life.
Things that shape the mainstream modern Western mind: