When it comes to mapping out the plethora of international, regional, and local conflicts around the world, related in one way or another to religious, ethnic, cultural, and racial differences, the field is simply too complex, varied, and wide to get a hold of in any definitive way. Moreover, the many instances of socio-economic injustices complicates matters even more as unbridled global capitalism, with its corresponding dehumanizing industries (weapons, human trafficking, etc.,) punctuates these conflicts in unprecedented ways. But as daunting as this task of mapping may be, it is work that must be undertaken nonetheless. Cognizant of the importance of this work, and committed to staying well-informed, LDI has identified dominant problem-areas that must be addressed.
These include, but are not limited to, new manifestations of religious fundamentalism and racism arising out of the inability to promote a meaningful and constructive dialogue between tradition and modernity. LDI recognizes that the tension between tradition and modernity is now universal and that some challenges and problems in this regard are common to the experience of most people around the world.
LDI’s specific response to this challenge is to encourage people to mine the treasures of their own philosophical heritage (emerging out of their own cultures) and to bring this wisdom to bear upon contemporary problems specific to these cultures as well as to those problems that are more universal. The particular heritage of distinct cultures must be re-read and re-discovered anew in each generation in the light of what could be called the one universal human culture. If particular cultural heritage is to survive and/or be appreciated at all, it must be reinvented through a rereading of tradition that begins to see the particular differences in cultures as complementary and constitutive of what might be called the one culture of mankind.
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