Holding on to our own identity and to the positive in our own culture, history and in our values, and at the same time being able to open up to the new society and actively integrate ourselves. Because as Goethe said: “Man only knows himself insofar as he knows the world.” If we know ourselves and also know others, we understand that “the whole thing is untrue”, as the philosopher Adorno said. Yes, every culture has its own identity that sets it apart. But that does not mean that there are not factors that all cultures have in common. Every culture also has traces of other cultures, just as every identity contains traces of other identities. Hence, the purity of a culture – if this term is applicable at all – is a mere assertion that has no real equivalent.
In this context and inspired by the thinker Edward Said, the poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote:
The east is not entirely east
the west not quite west
because identities are open to diversity
