The Common Threads Project

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About The Common Threads Project

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There are thousands of common threads running through all our lives, each able to bridge the divides of gender, race, creed, culture and class.

There are millions of images here on Flickr that make these threads visible.

The Common Threads Project is collecting those images and organizing them according to a comprehensive list of human universals -- behaviors and traits that are common to people in all cultures.

When you are looking at one of our collections of photos, you are doing something both subtly and profoundly different. Instead of looking at everything from the perspective of your culture you are looking at one thing from the perspective of many cultures.

The effect this has is both curious and wonderful. You may begin by noticing how different the pictures are — how different this supposed universal appears in all of these different cultures — but the longer you look the less these differences seem to matter.

Instead, you begin to see those differences for what they are: rather thin veils barely hiding something that matters very much. We have far more in common than our differences imply. We are far more alike than we are different.


The Common Threads Project is founded upon a belief and a hope:

We believe that when people recognize and accept what they have in common with others they are better able to live with what is different.

We hope the day will come when people no longer deny similarities and fear differences but accept similarities and appreciate differences.