Basket of Tolerance Website and Book Design Concept

The BOT is a Bibliography, collection of essays, and a curated collection of books and media. It is an extensive reading list which has become a map of the major cultural possibilities of human kind. All the major cultural traditions especially religious and spiritual and also social wisdom. Here are five of the compositions that I created.

A Traditional Story Illustrating the Design Concept

This concept begins with a traditional story about The Trickster with a very unusual hat–

Some villagers are out in two fields planting rice, half the people are in a field one side of a central road and the other half are in the field on the other side of the central road.

The trickster walks through the central road, the dividing line between the two fields wearing the unusual hat. One half of the people are on his left side and the other half of the people are on his right side.

During their lunch break they begin to talk about the pleasant man with the “black hat.” Someone else says “the hat was white,” and they began to argue, and then fight. “It was a white hat.” “No! It was a black hat!” They all take sides against each other, and the fight escalates into a riot. Then the trickster walks up, interrupts the arguing, and shows everyone that the hat is black on one side and white on the other side– revealing that the whole village was rioting simply because they each saw from a different point of view.