Right now there is a battle raging between fear & hatred on one side and tolerance & understanding on the other.
Teaching tolerance has been in the forefront of some "peace" movements and multicultural endeavors for a while.
Unfortunately it does not seem to be working.
Violence between ethnic, religious or cultural groups is breaking out like flash fires around the earth.
There is no apparent let up in the amount of intolerance in the world.
In Iraq they're calling it "civil war", but it's based on sectarian religious differences.
In Africa genocide and fighting between factions and tribes is flaring up.
Doing a search for war, I found 39 articles about a coming US "war" with Iran.
There are rumors of a "white cleansing in South Africa after Mandella dies.
If you look at the cause of hatred and violence, you will find fear every time.
People do not try to destroy something they do not fear.
This is an established psychological axiom.
It's the way our human minds work.
If our perception tells us something is threatening our survival, we will react to preserve ourselves.
But, what is the root of fear? How do children grow up to fear that which is different from them? How does that fear become strong enough to cause us to execute vengeance or violence? Without getting deeply into philosophy, we can agree that we humans are at least part mammal.
Like a lion or a tiger or a bear.
Mammals have a part of their brain that is called the amygdala.
This part of our brain takes over our higher minds if it thinks our survival is threatened.
When the amygdala gets triggered we are flooded with hormones and the flight or fight mechanism becomes activated.
Rationality and reason take a back seat.
Our survival mechanism fires up only when we perceive a threat to our survival.
Unfortunately, we can perceive a threat when there is none.
Our "sense of self" can seem to be threatened whenever we have strong associations to something and that "thing" is under any kind of perceived attack or threat.
Cultural conditioning and parental programming when we are young causes our minds to "link" our survival and sense of self with specific ideas, beliefs and situations.
This "linking" is the problem and the cause of all fear and loathing.
The association between our survival and our particular religious, cultural or personal belief is not "real", it is only a false linking.
By extension and linking this could mean our home, our job, our car, our money and our belongings as well as our ethnic group, religion or cultural beliefs etc.
One reason that "teaching" tolerance is relatively ineffective is because it only works on the higher mind.
It comes from a moral & reasoned perspective.
It can help people to understand each other, but does not go far enough that it can undo the effects of the survival mechanism when it is fully fired up.
Moral or reasoned beliefs reside in the higher mind which is bypassed by the lower mammalian survival mechanism.
The good news is that human change science has developed to the point where this "linking" can be undone.
We can now free our minds from any type of conditioned emotional reactivity or irrational fear.
There are several forms of this powerful transformative technology.
Sometimes know as Transformational Processing or Integrative Clearing Work [http://gfnproject.
com/ArticlesMain.
htm].
It is also called emotional clearing, deconstructive contemplation and radical self inquiry.
Engaging in this kind of trans-formative process, we learn to differentiate.
We can tell the difference between rational fear and irrational fear.
Through differentiation, our irrational resistance and fear is disengaged.
Our world view is opened up and we can now include that which we formerly rejected.
We can learn to tolerate and even appreciate and embrace those that are different from us.
Even those that happen to be "hating" (fearing) us at the moment.
Human Change technology is making huge strides.
Unfortunately this doesn't make the headline news.
Social Evolution for the most part is a slow moving train witch often takes one step forward and two steps back.
Another unfortunate fact is that those who need it most have little access to this technology.
So, what can be done? The only way to truly change the world is to free one human at a time.
First, we need to save ourselves before we can help anyone else.
This means, use the technology.
Apply it to your own life.
Get a course, or sign up for some sessions.
Next, tell others about it through your blog or by email or any other means possible.
The more people that "heal their minds" the more peace and tolerance will become a reality.