Žižek: Tolerance is not a solution there. What we need is what the Germans call a Leitkultur, a higher leading culture that regulates the way in which the subcultures interact. Multiculturalism, with its mutual respect for the sensitivities of the others, no longer works when it gets to this "impossible-à-supporter" stage. Devout Muslims find it impossible to tolerate our blasphemous images and our disrespectful humor, which constitute a part of our freedom. But the West, with its liberal practices, also finds forced marriages or the segregation of women, which are a part of Muslim life, to be intolerable. That's why I, as a Leftist, argue that we need to create our own leading culture.

We might benefit from a unifying perspective that fills the vacuum that nationalism and religion once did. Western culture offers tolerance and stories where plot plays second fiddle to individual growth. Yet, ironically, although cultural limitations continue to melt away, economic and physical realities threaten to corral us all. We are collaborating in waste and oppression, and disagreeing only about the meaning we find in how we go about it.