Analyze and discuss the article The Case for Contamination by Kwame Essay

Analyze and discuss the article The Case for Contamination by Kwame Anthony Appiah (from a religious perspective) - Essay Example In this regard, I believe it is important to understand the differences between religious and cultural beliefs, rather than to quickly gloss them over in favor of a unitarian belief that ignores the actual teachings of the religions themselves. For example, by learning the specific characteristics of Islam - submission, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, etc. – and understanding them historically as they relate to the development of unique schools of thought, ritual, and practice, we can understand the religion in a way that truly appreciates it as a cultural value system. What may appear as uniting in post-modern society can result in a further weakening of religion. This can be viewed as a modernization of religious belief, but it also illustrates the way that secular values can dilute and destroy religious diversity by posing all ideas in a supermarket of choices where all philosophies are packaged and sold equally, to anybody, but nobody really cares what is on the inside of the box. Thus, this essay will review the position of Kwame Anthony Appiah in the NYT article â€Å"The Case for Contamination,† analyzing the author’s call for multicultural unity, while searching for ways that this process can lead to greater understanding of religious diversity and uniqueness, rather than a dilution of religious belief into a secular paradigm dominated by the values of the marketplace. â€Å"In the past couple of years, Unesco's members have spent a great deal of time trying to hammer out a convention on the ‘protection and promotion’ of cultural diversity. (It was finally approved at the Unesco General Conference in October 2005.) The drafters worried that ‘the processes of globalization. . .represent a challenge for cultural diversity, namely in view of risks of imbalances between rich and poor countries.’ The fear is that the values and images of Western mass culture, like some invasive weed, are threatening to choke out t he world's native flora.† (Appiah, 2006) Appiah defines the position that he is reacting to as related to the UNESCO goal of the protection and promotion of cultural diversity. Appiah chides UNESCO, as if there really is no threat to indigenous culture, as if we were really not losing our cultural diversity globally in a manner similar to and driven by the same modern economic forces that has caused us to lose our natural biodiversity. The protection of endangered species and biodiversity is an extension and continuation of the protection of cultural diversity through multiculturalism. These two are joined in activism and in sharing a philosophical foundation. What Appiah posits as his ideal in contrast to traditional values is Cosmopolitanism, and in doing so I am afraid that he elevates the superficial aspects of the modern economic and social system to an undeserved place as an ideal. Traditional religious belief systems contain feudal, primitive, and even pre-historic aspe cts of our cultural heritage, with Buddhist teachings, the Vedas, and the Bible going back to the earliest days of recorded