we're looking at it the wrong way
I forget who said that truth is the stories that we tell ourselves about the data. That is certainly a paraphrase. Stories are summaries of events, including selected highlights, that tap into our inner cultural database, generating an emotional response of "interesting." The inner cultural database includes large figures in our personal lives, famous people, and mythical phenomena such as david and goliath. If you're in tune to all of this inner data, it will be easier for you to write and communicate. If you're out of tune, you will be dropped in the trash like mein kampf on herbert hoover's day off.
One story we have been telling ourselves about the hate toward the western world is that it has something to do with religion. This slicing up of the world is hard to refute: it shaped the laws of every country on earth, not to mention the wars and political boundaries. It has resonance with our inner cultural database, and as an explanation it just "feels right."
It's important to remember that this is just a story we have been telling ourselves. The more we tell it, the more important it becomes, the more grandiose, and ironically less believable. What if, for the sake of argument, we looked at 911 and the violence in spain and the israeli/pakistani conflict as a matter between how men and women treat each other, rather than as how two religions treat each other?
The more I thought about this, the more it made sense. Women are amazingly influential even when forced into a subservient role. The actions of men in the name of their religion or country can easily be attributed to standing up for their women. Whether you view a headscarf on a young french islamic girl as a problem or as a solution is a quick view into your inner cultural database. It speaks to what hopes you have for your family, your daughters. How can something as abstract as religion or as systematically flawed as the governments in power stand up to that very personal allegiance?
The great thing about looking at a problem differently is that is changes the solution set available. If we have a religious problem, we look to the texts and find a middle ground or guidance there. If we have a problem with our national boundaries, we look to our international laws and our policies, and as a last resort work within the context of a military action. But what if we have a problem, on a world scale, between men and women? Would the best way to respond involve food and healthcare? Accountability for human rights? It is obvious that the western governments have not seen this as part of the solution set for working with the rest of the world, because the stories we have told ourselves: this is about religion, this is about country - have superseded this interpretation. It means we are blind to other solutions.
Relevance to microsoft: When drawing up a feature list for a product, the cut line is based on a story you are telling yourself, such as internal business needs, or external customer needs. Ideally you have several stories on a variety of axis and can fix a point in that x-y-z space that is doable from a schedule standpoint. Bonus points for providing an excellent framework for decision making in order to resolve future questions.
Relevance to food: Not sure. The cafeteria is on my good side today. One of the people who work there has decided she hates eggs from a carton. If you eat eggs prepared by someone else, chances are they come from a carton. That's why they taste that way - indefinably foreign. So when I say "crack an egg for me" the cafeteria guy knows what I'm talking about. He says "you want real eggs?" Of course I want real eggs. But more interesting his his linguistic acknowledgement of the fact that eggs from a carton are not "real." I didn't know Noam Chomsky was coming to breakfast!