a nomadic journey

Cultural Preservation vs. Cultural Integration

If the opportunity for true freedom is not attainable is the salvation of a cultural heritage while living in exile enough to satisfy the Tibetan people? Hope is a theme that I keep returning to. Hope, without hope there will be no peace. Does cultural preservation help build and maintain hope? Or should cultural integration be the approach to survival? And if returning to the homeland is no longer an option, do the Tibetan people merely assimilate completely into their host countries, or are the cultural preservation institutions strong enough to sustain a permanent exiled status? Is permanent exile a healthy environment to live within? Or at some point, does the Tibetan population except that a free Tibet is not an option and resign to exist no longer as an autonomous body, but to maintain existence in a cultural and historical perspective. And does that mythico-history of Tibetan culture keep the future generations from finding a new homeland, a new country within which they will no longer feel the desire or need to cling to the exile status?

Does cultural identity truly play such a vital role in the preservation of heritage? Furthermore, is cultural identity relevant in the era of globalization, particularly when that cultural identity prevents certain peoples from advancing into modernization?

Is the mythico-history of the Tibetan culture an element of self-suppression? Or is it the means to maintain and engage the future generations who cling to a mother land they have never seen but yearn to return to? Is there a danger in clinging to such mythico-histories, or does the danger lie in dispelling such stories as merely myth? While in exile, are those mythico-histories the fabric of continuity and the element of hope that the people need to maintain their identity and their heritage?