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Article: Random Ramblings.(thoughts on various topics)(Brief Article)(Column)
- Article from:
- USA TODAY
- Article date:
- May 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Society for the Advancement of Education. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THERE ARE few absolutes. Truth may be one of them, but, because we are humans, our participation in truth is necessarily finite, relative, and historical. As the wisdom of the Talmud has it, "We do not see things the way they are; we see them the way we are."
Immaturity tends to absolutize our own culture, and we judge others by it. For example, American children ask why the English drive their vehicles on the wrong side of the street. We can't fathom why Hebraic and Arabic read right to left instead of left to right. We are even more surprised to learn that Egyptian hieroglyphics read up and down. We think Japanese music is disharmonious when, in fact, it has a ...