Cornelius Castoriadis, the great French social philosopher of Greek origin, was asked once by an exasperated interviewer: "What do you want, Mr. Castoriadis - to change humanity?" He answered: "No, God forbid, I only want humanity to change itself, as it has done so many times in the past." I would be inclined to answer the same way.

In "solid modernity" difference was tolerated as a temporary irritant only, expected to disappear tomorrow, when "those aliens" will become like us. "Living with strangers" was therefore not something to last and did not call for developing appropriate arts and skills. Now, however, it looks like that diasporic context of our living will not go away - it will be there forever, so learning how to live with strangers day in, day out without abandoning my own strangeness is high on the agenda.

There is less pressure on abandoning native communities: what for? There is nothing to be gained by it. On one hand, there are plenty tempting opportunities of experimenting with identities - being one kind of person today and a different the next day. On the other hand, there is little pressure to include the ethnic identity or religious identity into this mechanism, because now everybody is in a kind of Diaspora today.

Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.

What is assumed to be the materialisation of the inner truth of the self is in fact an idealisation of the material - objectified - traces of consumer choices.

Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.

You are a stranger, I am a stranger, we all remain strangers, and nevertheless we can like or even love each other.