Protests emerge from the Arab League, and 63 percent of Ameri­cans oppose intervention in the Lib­yan conflict, yet American missiles still rain down from the Mediterra­nean.

Since World War II, the United States has become the global police, creating conflicts around the world and spurring resentment domestical­ly and internationally. The culprit of the division of interests is a conflict of paradigms.

Sept. 11 brought the perspective of the global system arranged by America and European powers to the forefront of international poli­tics. Many within the Islamic civili­zation, stretching from Africa to In­dia, reject separation of church and state, women’s rights and capital­ism.

In the West, the principles are in­doctrinated through our education system and media. In the Islamic world, Madrassas (Islamic religious schools) practice the same tactics.

What results is a collision of par­adigms. This materializes into con­flicts because our perceptions are reality. Samuel P. Huntington, a re­nowned American political scientist, describes this as the “Clash of Civ­ilizations.”

Perception is the byproduct of the mixing of our attitude and knowl­edge. What we know to be true about the world and our attitude toward it defines our worldviews.

H. I. Hayakawa profoundly ar­gues that “the map is not the territo­ry.” Our map is what we see and un­derstand while the territory is reali­ty. No map can perfectly depict the territory, and each person’s map is slightly different.

Perception doesn’t just cause con­flict between societies, but within them as well. This is often exhibit­ed by generational paradigm shifts within a society.

I hear our professors talk about university life in the “good old days” (to which every generation claims to have once belonged), where with­drawal for non-attendance and Moo­dle didn’t exist, among other obsta­cles. The hypocrisy is that the peo­ple who abused the system are now the ones running it.

To professors, Moodle is a revo­lutionary tool that can help students and professors communicate and share resources outside of the class­room. To me, and many other stu­dents, Moodle is an invasive tool teachers can utilize to make assign­ments due outside of scheduled class times.

College is a profound paradigm shaper because of the intellectu­al pursuit it requires. The more we learn about the world, the more ac­curate our “map” becomes. College is also influential because of the age group to which the majority of stu­dents belong.

Stepping out from the cocoon of protection and influence of our par­ents is instrumental in becoming an adult. It is an age of exploration and discovery.

The conflicts that emerge from the differences in paradigms cannot be avoided. It is not a single person, culture, country or civilization that instigates this, but human nature it­self. We can only seek to be under­stood and to understand, but never truly achieve this.

Although this cannot be over­come, it can be improved. Percep­tions will never be perfect maps, but we can make them better.

Henry David Thoreau once re­marked, “I know of no more encour­aging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”