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A restaurant opened in a small town in the state of Indiana a few years ago, specializing in vegetarian foods made with vegetables and fruit supplied by nearby farms. The remarkable thing was that the menu included steak. It is not so strange for a steak restaurant to serve vegetable side-dishes; but that a vegetarian restaurant should serve steak somehow boggles the imagination. The reason was simple enough: consideration for guests who do not like vegetarian food. This is the concept of inclusion.
At American Girl Place, the celebrated doll shop chain, any visiting girl can find a doll resembling her or she likes. The chain has adopted a new marketing concept that caters to children who do not like blonde, slim Barbie. Luxury and niche marketing strategies were fashionable a while ago, concentrating on narrowly classified bands of consumers. But now the watchword is ˇ°inclusion," and strategies are shifting to appealing to as varied a range of consumers as possible and not alienating them.
Campus Crusade for Christ at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio has 7,000 members, the largest number for an organization of its kind. Oxford also has about 20 churches, which is a lot for a city with a population of 30,000. Living there for eight years, I had never heard any colleague, citizen and student tell me, "Believe in Jesus Christ" or "Come to church." Nor did I hear any attacks on the faith of students from the Arab and Oriental cultural zones. When Buddhism or Islam are discussed, they listen attentively and express respect. They always consider the other person on a priority basis and help others in everyday life. One gets the feeling that the Christian teachings are practiced in a mature manner.
But moving to a university in New York, I was obliged to participate in a few orientation courses. One of them is a harassment course. obligatory under state law for newcomers in public offices, state and private schools and businesses above a certain scale. Harassment is often used to mean sexual harassment, but a portion in the course is devoted to religious harassment.
Forcing a religion on others is treated like sexual harassment; aggressive proselytizing is banned. It is illegal to inconvenience another by trying to persuade them of a particular religion. Punishment is nearly as strict as for gender discrimination, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and homophobia. A breach of the rules invites suits running to millions of dollars, and not only individuals but also the organization, school and corporation they belong are liable.
The principle is that since the United States is a country founded on the Christian spirit, and inconveniencing others in a society where helping others is perceived as the greatest virtue is thought to be very wrong and shameful.
It is wrong for a state to display religious bias. Making a religion feel religious bias is wrong. A good religion lets people reflect on their lives and guides them to consider others. It can show people how to live much more healthy, honest and righteous lives than ideologies that seek wealth, rank and fame in this world only. To achieve that, recognition of other religions and respect for other cultures are essential.
The more mature a man is, the more generous he gets; the more a state develops, the wider its inclusion. Once we aspired to inclusion by the world. The inclusion of other countries and societies made the Korean Wave in Asia possible, helping establish our position overseas. Now we must include other religions and other cultures. To do that, we need to embrace the concept of inclusion. ˇ°Inclusion,ˇ± they say, ˇ°includes includers.ˇ± It is the watchword of the global era.
This column was contributed by Park Jin-bae, a professor of interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
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