When addressing global issues such as healthcare, pandemic threats, education, and religion, I believe that anthropology brings an interesting yet crucial perspective to the table. When addressing such huge problems throughout the world, often times people don’t take into consideration other people’s culture—including their cultural values, environment, access to resources, the history of the culture, geographical location, and overall cultural relativism.
Anthropology could contribute to finding a solution for religious conflict by mainly just being more understanding and open-minded. Anthropologist can inform all people of different religions and their beliefs and why they do certain rituals, traditions, or daily practices. Or just why they believe what they do. Getting a better understanding of the culture of the religion, and realizing that there is a justifiable reason to why they do what they do, will help people become less judge mental and more understanding. Fewer conflicts will arise because people will be more understanding and realize that not everyone is going to believe what you believe. Our own religion and beliefs aren’t necessarily the “right” religion, the “right” way of living. It’s just different. Who decides what is right? Here we go back to discussing art. Who decides what is art, what is beautiful? What has meaning? Every one of us has our own meaning, our own importance and significance to different things. What a person values and how they live their life is different among every person, every culture. Education I believe is the first step to ending religious conflict. A lot of times we know the basics about a certain religion, but we don’t know the entire story. Why they do that? The true meaning behind it all. Changing our perspectives and having an open mind is second. Becoming less judge mental, stereotypical, and eliminating prejudice and discrimination. The last step is to surround ourselves with diverse people—with different ethnicity, hobbies, beliefs, religions, etc. This will expose us to this diversity and help us become more accepting of others. We will realize that there are other ways to go about things and live our lives. Also the final factor that is key in ending religious conflicts is to realize the commonalities and similarities we have. Looking at the human universals and what we all share in common and brings us together; looking at what unites us rather than what divides us.
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