|
|
United We Stand The current popularity of individualism
notwithstanding, human beings are profoundly social beings.
Virtually all our significant experiences, the full range from the
grand to the sublime, are shared experiences.
We are most human when we are acting in community with others
—
as family,
as a nation. A strongly united community
is a special case of community characterized by a powerful sense of
belonging. There are
only two ways that human beings create such strong unity. The tried and true original way, the means by which
human culture was probably born, is that of uniting against a common
enemy. Imagine for a moment a
sparsely populated region at the dawn of human history where many small
extended family/tribes lived in a quasi-stable, unfriendly peace
characterized by occasional raids by neighboring family/tribes stealing
food, domestic animals, and perhaps women and children.
Then several hundred years later, one finds a "nation"
has replaced the previously separate and distinct family/tribes. What could have caused such a remarkable transformation?
Likely as not it was some crisis like a red horde sweeping in from
outside the region causing the family/tribes to unite against it for their
very survival, or one of the family/tribes trying to violently take over
the whole region. Their war
against and victory over the enemy aggressor, something they engaged in
that was much larger than their differences, welds them together in a
strong and lasting unity. Uniting
against a common enemy is not only as old as history.
It has been called the very engine of history. As Ronald Reagan so wisely pointed out (before the
Berlin Wall came down), if the earth were attacked from outer space, the
Cold War would be over in a New York second.
Some 2500 years earlier, Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, described what has been
called his logos of violence: War
is the father of all and king of all, who manifested some as gods and some
as men, who made some slaves and some freemen. War makes the king then war takes him down and makes
a new one, ad infinitum.
The basic mechanism here is also the engine of public politics.
Polarization into us versus
them unites us quickly and firmly.
It always has — but
not without serious drawbacks. The us of
the us-them polarization is
always defined primarily vis a vis them,
the enemy. Without the enemy, the strong cohesion in us dissipates. The
social cohesion and its "afterglow" from WWII lasted about 20
years. When we fail to unite,
as for the Viet Nam War, we reap no social cohesion from it; quite the
opposite actually. A second,
perhaps more serious, problem is that when our resentment is focused on
the enemy, we experience a near total blindness to our own faults.
There is no more certain way to prevent our correcting them. This holds true on the personal level as well.
Gossip, holding grudges, and one-upmanship
—smaller
scale cases of us versus them—
are quite
effective in taking our minds off our own shortcomings.
Third, as resentment is a key factor in all cases of us
versus them, it is appropriate to recall Irish novelist Malachy
McCourt's words on resentment. He
says, Having
resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Serious reflection on these words should help us to
reconsider participation in us
versus them. Sociologist and educator, Parker Palmer, described
the other way to create strongly united communities. He said that a strong and lasting unity results from
struggling together against some diminishment of life. We experience this form of unity in natural
disasters, in social justice movements, in service groups
— wherever
some group of people has to pull together against some dire condition.
Although this could seem to apply as well to an us
versus them situation, what Palmer is talking about here is working
against conditions, not against people.
In this route to strong social unity, there is no person or persons
who are the enemy, no them, therefore no us versus
them. The oppressor, for
example, needs freeing from his delusions (which certainly limit his
possibilities) just as the oppressed need freeing from the oppression. The oppressor, of course, should be brought to justice if he
has committed a crime. But
what creates the strong unity in the community is their focus on and
efforts against the oppression not against the oppressor per
se. In this unity, we do
not vent anger and resentment at, nor define ourselves with respect to,
the oppressor. We do not
scapegoat him. And in the
humble refusal to do this we are not distracted from our own shortcomings. By focusing efforts against the injustice rather than the
unjust, this approach also tends to preclude polarization. In this approach, a sense of being called
to serve and the integrity of subjugating our self-interest to the needs
of others constitute our sense of who we are (in this unity).
This in contrast with being constituted by a strong sense of being not them, the enemy.
Part of the social cohesion we reaped
from WWII came from the struggle on the home front against the
diminishments of life the war imposed here -- the rationing, the effects
of the shortage of labor, fear and grief for our young men and women in
harms way. WWII has been called the last good war because it
brought a double dose of lasting unity that far eclipses anything since.
When, as in the Viet Nam War and in our current "War on
Terrorism," we feel no need to sacrifice, experience no difficulty in
coping with wartime austerity, no strong sense of being all in this
struggle together, we reap social cohesion only via the us
versus them route. And
that requires unity against the them.
Without some mission, the healthier form of social
cohesion will also tend to dissipate.
But our common sense tells us that there will be no shortage of
diminishments of life. We cannot reasonably hope that the us
versus them approach will shrink from the stage of human history.
Ushering it out will not be easy.
No alternate means of settling domestic political differences, much
less international disputes, has found the level of acceptance required to
squeeze us versus them out any
time soon. Fortunately, there
is no serious lack of means to delay our forswearing gossip, grudges, and
one-upmanship on a personal level or to considering these things
when we choose our civic leaders and when we counsel them.
And it will certainly be beneficial to the future of the human race
if we make an earnest effort to redirect the focus in instances of us
versus them wherever we can and to seek opportunities for unity in
service to others. |