We want to be like them, they want to be like us. We’re all wrong

‘Peace be upon you”: Every day we make this greeting to people we meet – to our friends, to strangers, to someone who picks up the phone. We say the words, but do we really mean them? Almost every religion tells its followers to love and respect other people, their well being, their emotions, their beliefs. Do we do that? Or do we use religion more like a weapon to harm others?

Today, the world is more like a small village, with nearly everyone able to connect with the rest of the world. For many of us, our standard of living has improved tremendously in recent years, but a big problem has also arisen: jealousy.

Today, no nation wants to be called backward in any field. Every country is trying to stay ahead of its neighbours, technically and militarily. Steps are taken to prove supremacy in trade and industry. Even the sovereignty of other countries, as we can see this week in Georgia, means little in this game of outdoing everyone else.

The people of the East adopt the culture of the West and discard their previous ethical and moral values. Multiculturalism and the banner of tolerance (although not always its practice) combine to trivialise our values, while our traditions seem only to survive if they can be made profitable: value, sadly is too often replacing virtue. This philosophy often rides on the coat tails of modernisation – for which, read Westernisation.

In the race for success and progress we have almost forgotten to value each other’s culture, sovereignty, equality and self-respect. Let’s just have an idea of the changes happening in the world and possible ways of improving our attitudes towards them.

Culture is infamously difficult to define, and even harder to preserve as the lives of the more than six billion individuals on our planet entwine. Cultural changes have been more noticeable in the countries of the East as the people try to copy the ways of the West. They believe that by becoming “Westernised” they will be considered to have acquired class and their country will be seen as a developed nation.

We anthropologists are always being pressed to provide specific examples to back up our claims. But highlighting cultural threats and the extinction of traditional values is not as black and white as, say, a corporate bottom line. Nor should we in the GCC ,when comparing ourselves to the West, be considered superior for being more collective than individualistic. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Collectivism can lead to a herd mentality and a sense of confinement. Individualism can put the success of one at the expense of another – or many others – and an ultimate loss of self.

Respect of one’s own culture is a fundamental necessity and needs to be recognised as such; tradition is an asset inherited from our forefathers. People who try to ape Western ways should realise that there are just as many Westerners trying to copy Eastern culture. They find their own culture shallow and materialistic, so they look to the East for deeper moral values and to reconnect to the virtues of strong family ties that they feel they have lost.

Sovereignty means the independence of the country to make decisions of its own without the interference of any other country. The sad fact is that by trying to proving its own autonomy in the world, every developed nation puts at risk the sovereignty of others. By attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, the United Sates proved it is a superpower, but it has benefited little, merely reinstating the threats and tensions of the Cold War.

Equality lies at the root of democracy. Equality before the law, equality to enjoy fundamental rights, are considered essentials of democracy – yet in practice there are huge inequalities in many countries, and much discrimination between one group and another, especially in the United States.

In a nutshell, a respect for each other’s sovereignty, culture and right to equality are a pre-requisite if we are to mean what we say when we make that daily greeting: Peace be upon you.

Dr Salem Humaid is an Emirati writer and researcher in cultural and anthropological studies based in Dubai.