Rubber Soul, 1/22

"Let difference replace conflict."--Barthes

These four words, put so simply, really made an impact on me. If you think about all the struggles surrounding certain texts, whether they are religious books, films, or music, it's really quite unnerving to think how people can be so ignorant to other interpretations.
Just recently I read a newspaper article in the New York Times about the Chinese government detaining 59 people in Tibet. The detainees were charged of “spreading ethnic hatred” by selling and downloading banned songs from the Internet. The detainees are accused of threatening national security by advocating for an independent Tibet by carrying out orders from the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader exiled by the government for “encouraging separatism in Tibet.” Chinese officials have been searching for cds containing “reactionary songs” in the markets of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
There are obviously a lot of factors contributing to this particular conflict, but the fact that a text, such as music, is banned due to content that strays from China’s preferred norm goes to illustrate the point that a wider known and more practiced concept is equating difference with threat. It’s the notion of the feared “Other.” Individuals, institutions, and nations continue to spark conflicts over the textual, “Other,” because they make no effort to relate. One opinion over-rules the other and texts are transformed into absolute truths that must be followed accordingly or else condemnation ensues. If more people grasped the concept of accepting difference in what one reads, watches, or listens to, we would find ourselves in a much less stressful state.