All of us deal with the COMMON CONCERNS of life: finding food and shelter, building relationships, defining ourselves, coming of age, forming communities, traveling from place to place--you can probably think of others. But different groups have different ways of responding to these CONCERNS. Our RESPONSES depend on our environment, our history and our creativity. Together, these forces shape the varieties of human culture.

What's the big deal about differences?
When we assume that "our way" of doing things is the norm, or the only right way, we begin to look at people who do things differently as more that just different. We tend to label them as inferior...or odd...or maybe as downright perverse. We may fear people who aren't like us. And tensions arise--between individuals, between communities, between nations.

Attaching value judgments to cultural differences can become hurtful, especially when privileges and opportunities, which are based on these judgments, are denied to members of one group, yet extended to members of another. And history is a litany of oppression traceable to differences: person against person, group against group, nation against nation. To this day and around the world, contempt for other people's differences leads us to turn our backs on one another, or even at times to commit grave acts of violence.

How can understanding help?
Understanding the reasons for differences helps us take the value judgment out of "different." It helps us live in mutual respect with people whose beliefs are different from our own. And working toward cultural understanding gives each of us the chance to define more clearly what we believe, to know ourselves and each other better, and, ultimately, to strengthen connections among us all.