DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS

The stamp is dedicated to the year United Nations proclaimed the year of dialogue among civilizations. The World Post Association has invited participants to a prize competition for the choice of an original stamp design, also announced by the Croatian Post. The stamp has been issued in a 20-stamp sheet, and there is also the First Day Cover (FDC). In the course of history, the meaning of the culture of dialogue among civilizations has always been clear. Get to know the other person as one's fellow creature means rise above the prejudices and idols of one's native land. Openness towards the world of others, different from "my backyard" provokes twofold feelings: anxiety and satisfaction. Consequently, a dialogue among civilizations is not an obligation imposed upon national cultures. It is the imperative of responsibility towards mankind. The dialogue is a prerequisite of true freedom of the man as an individual. On this foundation there are built collective worlds of differences and unity. Even if they have ever existed, there are no more closed civilizations without ideas being transferred, without learning from others, without fateful closeness with them. The history of civilization shows that the dialogue among peoples has, from the earliest beginnings, transformed from coexistence and peace into conflicts and wars. At the end of the 20th century, the space and time of the global fate of humankind, the words well-known from all monotheist religions - Christianity, Buddhism and Islam - like tolerance, peace, love, forgiveness, freedom of conscience, all these words have become, at the same time, empty phrases, but also signs of the meaning of human speech as the expression of human dignity. The apocalyptic events of endangering world peace have completely distorted fundamental values. Who should we believe at all? The morally bent politicians, covetous persons without characteristics, warlike instigators of hatred and racism in the name of patriotism and the defence of national interests? The world civilizations are not founded on religious and ideological differences. They stand above the misuse of religion and nationality. The universality of human rights, the tolerance of differences among people, the culture of peace, all these are not only principles of the new age of all enlightened societies that aspire to achieve the idea of eternal peace, according to Kant's thoughts of the utopian idea of the moral progress of mankind. "There is no way to peace: peace is the way" Mahatma Ghandi used to say. Only such policy that will finally pose the question, on a global level, of the purpose of human life outside all limitations in the name of nation, sex, race, has some chances of rise above the despicability of amoral means that modern politics is based on. This is why any announcement of a clash between the worlds, even born in the futuristic mind of a scientist deluder that describe realistically the events in the world, is a prophecy of irresponsibility and cynicism. While arriving at the magnificent court of Kublai Khan, the Croatian seafarer and cultural missionary Marco Polo was not coming there with the idea of converting the mythical ruler to Christianity. The Sufistic mystics and brilliant Arabic philosophers like Ibn Khaldun and Avicena have retained the time-honoured wisdom of the West by reshaping Aristotle's ideas into their own ideological systems. The dialogue among civilizations at the time of global openness is a painstaking apprenticeship in contrition and sublimity. Understand the others, honour the differences, all this is not possible without mutual respect. When we talk about the dialogue among civilizations at the beginning of the third millennium, we do not want to remain arrested by a pathetic speech that puts no obligation upon anybody and does not overstep anything. After a genuine dialogue, the partners emerge purified and different. It is like a catharsis. Getting liberated from prejudices, it is also a capacity of learning for the future of the man's cosmopolitan destiny. Civilizations are the common good of mankind, while cultures are a specific case of a country's or state's identity. Only in the dialogue among civilizations can culture survive as the living heritage of memory. All the rest is emptiness of oblivion, the first step to abominable hatred masked by "holy goals." We are at the threshold of global civil society. To refute the misconceptions and prejudices of myths about one's origin, of "blood and land" demands the freedom of an individual in all cultures. Without it, pluralism of views on the world and the respecting of differences is a hopeless project. Civilizations and virtual worlds of the possible cannot be satisfied by failed illusions on the technological progress as a prerequisite of a different life. According to the post-modern theoretician Donna Haraway, living beings and cyborgs do not have the same "civilizational" task of blind belief in progress in front of them any more. In front of them they find a reversal of values, the new time of female emancipation, the faith in the uniqueness of mankind, nature and spirituality without ulterior motives of enslavement. The way to such a civilization leads through the art of dialogue among civilizations. There is no other way.