Ideologues make Trojan horses of factual account packed with ethical valuations.

Once you learn to open the horse and force out the passengers, you can accept gifts from your enemies.

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While all religions attempt accounts for the same metaphysical sphere of reality — at least to the degree of acknowledging its existence — they assume sharply divergent ethical stances. Religions seem alike only when lumped together and opposed to strictly scientific accounts of reality, similarly to how all classical music sounds the same to ears accustomed to popular music.

Perhaps there’s another stratum of truth above ethical principles where variety converges again into unity. Even if this is the case, it does not serve the purposes of the perennialist peacenik crowd who plaster their vehicles with “coexist” bumper stickers, reject the hard-edged formalities of religion in favor of a nebulous spirituality of passive vegged-out bliss.

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Denial of difference does not accomplish peace.

Treating peace as something that should already be, and would already be if it weren’t for the viciousness of our neighbor, is violent and will incite violence.

If your neighbor thinks a point of disagreement is important and you disagree, you have not settled the disagreement, except in your own mind. You have deepened and intensified the disagreement through disrespect. Respect requires belief in what stands beyond your own mind and its current horizons.

Respectfully acknowledging differences, taking them seriously, working with them, learning from them, changing in response to what we learn — that is how peace is accomplished.

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Peaceful unity is accomplished through working together toward a permanently transcendent universal.