ABSTRACT
How do we human beings come to understand ourselves and others around us? This question could not be more timely or pertinent to the issues facing humankind today. At the heart of many of our world's most troubling political and social problems lies a divergence, and sometimes a sharp contradiction, in perspectives between nations and/or cultural groups. For example, how should we characterise the seemingly intractable divide between the governments of India and Pakistan, America and Iran, among many others? What lies at the heart of the continuing rifts between Israelis and Palestinians? How has the political divide in the United States taken on such polemic divisions? How are we to make sense of the baffling resistance certain groups of people in many nations have to the overwhelming evidence of the human causes of global climate change?
