By Jeff Singh, Awake Free, Contributor for the Culture of Awareness

It does us no good to ignore the issues facing our times. Perhaps at the year’s end, we can find some reflection to see the picture that’s been emerging through a 2015 year in review and find perspective for greater solutions in the coming years.

The major news events of 2015 have a striking thread that runs through them. It’s been a year of bringing systemic problems blaring to the surface to be addressed. It was a year of attacks that shook us and brought underlying prejudices to light.

Let’s see if we can follow this thread to see the root cause of the challenges we face so we can address them where real change can take place.

As our world becomes more and more global with various cultures coming face to face, it’s a year that brings the responsibility of how we relate in the world squarely into our hands or rather our mind.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California remind us how quickly hate can shake the world.

What we’re seeing through radicalized Islamists is a belief in fixed ideals and an attempt to defend and propagate those beliefs at all costs. This fixed belief system sparks a prejudice and hate for anything that threatens their belief about how life should be.

This minority group of radical Islamists is what’s causing the influx of Syrian refugees, majority of them muslim, escaping what is terrorizing their own land.

The loudest statements against an entire culture and religion from Trump is not exactly the sanest. But his approval ratings bring to light a simmering prejudice against muslims, an Islamophobia that’s been growing since 9/11.

But just as we can’t call all Christians, fundamentalists, we can’t call all Muslims, extremists.

So how about we address the problem where it actually is – in the minds of the radicalized – in the prejudice which causes their violence against others, including themselves.

Sweeping generalizations from prejudice are the very seeds of hate that we abhor when we see the effects.

But when you see the seed, you know the place to act – to unearth that seed of prejudice before it sows.

While we defend our borders from outsiders, there is a fundamentalism and prejudice happening in our own nation that threatens the peace of it’s people.

How we relate with each other and how we raise each other in this globalized world is the question. Do we isolate ourselves behind thicker walls to protect our way of life or do we remain flexible with expanding awareness – understanding that there is still much to learn about the world and humanity.