virtualberta

If you are locked into a clash-of-civilizations mentality, you rarely contemplate the patterns of behavior that cut across religion, ethnicity, nationality, and "deep history" itself to shape our present-day world. In this case, these would include cultures of power, violence, terror, and indoctrination--shared cultures, to our shame, of indifference to the suffering of others. Of course there are differences, including cultural differences in the more traditional sense. But these are not, in and of themselves, determinative.

-John Dower, "Rethinking culture," Soundings, Spring 2003.