Towards a New Art of Integration

Integration is an important calling of life, self, culture, society, and the world.1,2 But its significance is rarely realized in our present-day world, as we live a fragmentary existence and valorize differences. Social and discursive movements in the last half century have challenged us to cultivate differences, but cultivation of difference is different from valorization. Differences also have threads of connections among them—they also seek to be part of a respectful and dignified emergent wholeness. Differences are also part of an emergent journey of integration, an integration which does not suppress differences but which builds upon their flourishing. This calls for a new art of cultivation of identity and differences and making both co-travellers and co-painters in a new art of integration, which may be called “differential integration,” which is not totalitarian and oppressive but rather seeks to help us realize our connectedness and potentiality. This can help us in creatively crossing our borders and learning across.