Initiatives of Change - Detailed view of For A Change Articles

When we started For A Change in 1987 it was the dawn of the age of personal computing. We had three different computer systems that couldn't read each other's disks. Getting text (just plain text, mind you, not fancy Word files with formatting and fonts!) from one machine to another was quite a business, involving hooking up a serial cable and running an arcane program called 'kermit' on each computer.

How things have changed. Now we take for granted the communications revolution that PCs are an integral part of.

What has made it possible is agreed standards: ISO (International Standards Organisation) standard 9660 means that a CD that I burn on my computer running Linux can be read on an Apple or Windows machine. The standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium w3c.org are what enables you to read this in your web-browser right now, whatever kind of machine or software you are running. Similar standards enable emails to be exchanged, and the list can go on and on.

There is a similar principle at work when it comes to human interactions. At the very basic level if two people want to communicate they have to agree to use shared language. If the version of French I speak is different from my listeners version of French (a very likely scenario) then misunderstanding is probable.

But human interactions are not just about talking. We buy and sell from each other, work together, visit medical practitioners when sick, visit a mechanic when our car is sick and phone a plummer when our drains are blocked.

In all of these kinds of interactions we know what to expect because there is another set of standards involved. At its crudest it is the rule of law - but that law rests on a shared sense of what is fair, what is polite, and how we should treat each other. In short, the law rests on a shared set of moral values.

Just imagine life without those standards. It would be chaos! Like driving in a country where there are no road rules (actually I think I have driven in countries like that!).

Maybe I am labouring a point that is obvious, but it seems to me that understanding the role of shared moral values is fundamental to living in harmony with diversity. Those people who advocate assimilation are like the people who say that everyone should use Microsoft Windows and MS Word. Eliminate all the Apple-Macs and all the Linux boxes, force people to stop using Word Perfect and Lotus and we can all communicate!

On the other hand the Western tradition of tolerance has often ignored the need for a shared moral framework, choosing instead to believe that morality is a private matter and that it is up to each individual to decide for themselves.

Leaving only the rule of law as a common framework for communities to get along with each other seems to me as about effective as hooking up serial cables and running Kermit.

As with ISO standards, the best ones are derived from an ongoing shared conversation and debate. Fortunately a lot has already happened (see, for example, the Parliament of World Religions). Maybe it is time we overcame our coyness and started to have these kind of debates instead of constantly pointing our fingers at those who are different and demanding that they assimilate to our ways.