[M]any people say things like ‘investing in a love relationship’ as if they are talking about investing in stock market or in financial projects. That is a customer not a human or a citizen language. This type of language is filled with clues about how we have internalized ourselves as customers.

It should make us take seriously the consequences of a culture in which openness and acceptance are nothing more than part of the job description that some people despise and leave behind like a worn-out shirt once they leave work.

[I]t is naïve to think that the solution for this problem lies in imposing ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’ of difference as phony corporate job descriptions. We need serious systematic and structural changes to achieve this goal. It takes a lifelong to learn how to love and lifelong to learn how to hate others. Having a healthy society that knows how to value and appreciate difference should not be a job responsibility, but a way of life.

Wouldn’t it be healthier and more meaningful if we lived in communities in which openness and acceptance of difference are instilled in the society in organic and genuine ways rather than imposed on people at a later stage in their lives as job descriptions?