Societies are inherently plural and diverse; they are essentially intersectional. The richness of human diversity has been labeled and categorized, making possible the discrimination and exclusion of “unwanted” diversities, but the impact of discrimination is not only reflected at the social level but also at the individual level. Segregation by race, ethnicity, or sex is evident and generates situations of individual undervaluation, situations in which there is a self-rejection of their identity and, by extension, of those who are similar to them, causing wounds in the inner self. Mentorship emerges as a response to heal the wounds of multiple discrimination, offering a multidimensional work approach, because our self-determination is only the tip of the iceberg; we only show a part of the story since it is strongly influenced by attitudes, habits, beliefs, and thoughts hidden from others.
TopA System Of Meaning And Significance Of A Cultural Nature
Following Parekh (1999), let us say that all human beings grow up and live in a culturally structured world. We organize our lives and social relations according to a system of sense and meaning of a cultural nature. We thus view the world from within a culture.
On the assumption that no culture is an island since all of them are interrelated at some point, either through migration or crossbreeding, the profound differences between cultures represent different systems of meaning and vision of what is a satisfactory project of personal and social life.
Every culture is immensely plural and is in constant dialogue with its different traditions and currents of thought. This does not mean that it lacks identity, but rather that its identity is plural, fluid, and open. Today’s cultures are also the result of the interaction of one with another and carry within them intermingled elements, are living cultures that develop in constant evolution. In this understanding, cultural rootedness does not mean determinism because we are capable of critically evaluating the values, norms, and behavioral patterns of our own and other cultures.
In fact, each culture realizes a limited range of human capacities and emotions because no culture possesses the exclusivity of the values that form the heritage of the human species, needing other cultures to know itself better, broaden its intellectual and moral horizons, and broaden its intellectual and moral horizons save itself from cultural narcissism. And the recognition of its internal plurality and of the changes that operate in it is what allows the recognition of the value of the others.
From these characteristics, every culture capable of recognizing its internal differences can open itself to external differences, thus producing dialogue between cultures, where the different cultures, while maintaining substantial differences, also achieve substantial convergences, confirming UNESCO’s thesis (1997) that “no culture is an island.”
Therefore, given the plural and multicultural configuration of today’s society, it is imperative that we recognize that we are firmly entering a new global paradigm. This paradigm is no longer just an idea that we intuit, imagine, think and feel, but is a reality that we live. Unfortunately, many of us are still in that unipolar cultural space inherited, sustained, and transmitted by the so-called centers of power, such as educational, religious, communicational, economic, political, and familial institutions, that is, by those who pull strings, so we dance unconsciously and with our backs turned to this evident reality that characterizes life in its broad spectrum.
Today more than ever, we live in contexts that are irreversibly plural. Educational systems, which are called upon not to make diversity invisible, are in an endless search for a balance between an education that discovers and reinforces in each individual what makes him/her similar to others, together with his/her insertion in communities that are bearers of a specific culture with the right to express and maintain themselves, always ensuring equal formation opportunities, towards the horizon of the necessary social inclusion.
Since the ancestral wisdom of our species, we have glimpsed the importance of knowing that we belong, are connected, included, and loved, is indispensable to keep us alive. Still, the cultural tendency has been to twist these essential conditions to maintain human life through concepts as dangerous as the superiority of some over others.
Indeed, the hierarchization of the human race has increased as feelings of belonging, taken to the extreme of possession, have deepened. This is especially noticeable when feelings of irrational nationalism emerge, which are nothing more than an exacerbated fanaticism of racial self-valorization. Thus, feelings of racial belonging emerge, which are then translated into the cultural, expressing affinity for similarity and rejection of diversity, be it racial, cultural, social, or even material.
Probably the genesis of these socio-cultural and racial roots have arisen from patriarchy, which laid the foundations of the current social conformation, with a deep androcentric valuation oriented to possession, positioning in the imaginary ideal of societies, gender superiority, and later, the misinterpreted superiority of possessing over the intrinsic being that is formed by these multiple layers of the human essence such as the spiritual, moral, emotional, intellectual., etc., which should be appreciable values in society beyond mere material wealth.