I grew up in New York City, in a kind of run-down, lower middle class neighborhood. From the time I could be outside and relating to other kids, I was surrounded by people with different cultural backgrounds – German, Mexican, Irish, Italian, Chinese, and some others I didn’t know how to pronounce. We had different values, different religions, different family models, so part of our job as kids was to figure out a way to find common ground despite those differences.
I grew up surrounded by multiple models of reality interacting together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes not.