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And now who does the thinking for us?

Francisco MiravalIt is undeniable that we live at a time of ever growing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. However, in that expanding context of ideas and beliefs, why only a few selected people seem to be doing all the thinking? And why just a few are heard and others (like us) are excluded from the dialogue?I ask those questions because a couple of years ago I attended a national conference of writers of religion articles and, to my surprise, I was the only Hispanic there. A year ago, I was at a national conference of philosophy and, again, I was the only Latino. And I recently attended a national conference of theology, and, in this case, I was one of the only two Latino participants (the other person was an undergrad student who participated by special invitation.)Who, then, is doing all the thinking for us? Who takes into consideration our history, our present, and our challenges and wishes for the future? If we (who, after all, are the best experts about ourselves, at least from a certain perspective) don’t think by and for ourselves, how is thinking for us and what kind of ideas we adopt and follow?I must say that I have pondering about those questions for a long time, but I feel ashamed for asking those questions. After all, who am I to challenges or, God forbid, reject the intellectual acumen of those who organize conferences or speak at those conferences, or those whose ideas are debated at those conferences?In other words, if I were able to achieve the academic and intellectual level of those who present at those conferences, perhaps I would also be able to do a presentation and people would listen to me. But that’s a false argument, because it assume that “they” are the model to copy and nothing is accomplished by blaming myself for not being like them. However, the question above mentioned is valid and its validity was confirmed to me (and my shame almost disappeared) after listening recently to an interview with Takeshi Umehara, the most prominent (and controversial) among current Japanese philosophers.In the interview, Umehara (now 89 years old), explained how he began to study philosophy when he was 15, how the events of War World II (included Japan’s defeat and the two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki) guided his studies, how and why he spent years studying Western philosophers, and why he later decided, without neglecting philosophy, to focus on the history and religion of Japan to gain a new ground for his thinking, not based on the “emptiness” of Western thought.In “The Civilization of the Forest” (1999), Umehara says that, while Western thought has arrived to a “dead end,” there are “certitudes of great import for all of humanity” in Japanese culture and religion (and, I add, in the culture and religion of many other peoples.)Perhaps we should go back to our own culture and religion to begin thinking for ourselves.

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