Learning About - Learning from - Learning with the Other Challenges of Inter-religious Learning: Learning About Each Other, from Each Other, with Each Other

Abstract

I have a friend who believes that all governments lie – especially about going to war. He believes that people in power advance their own class interests by fomenting hysteria which results in a lust to destroy the enemy. Ordinarily sane people believe propaganda, he says, because they have no alternate information, and they accept the consequences of going to war because they have no idea of war’s realities. While there are other subjects we can discuss dispassionately, the emotions he displays on this topic are uncomfortably intense. The reason for his reaction reveals something important about the relationship between assumptions and reality.