I mean, I'm not without a clue. Some things don't feel all that strange. I don't find it odd, for instance, that folk like to identify with certain categories ...Bahai, Buddhists, Christians, Druize, Hindus, Jaines, Jews, Moslems ... who have I missed? Many, of course. I don't find it particularly odd that folks divide on matters that have little to do with substance ... whether they marry or not ... whether they have children or not ... what kind of pigments are in their skin .... where they came from ... what kind of spices their Mothers used in their soup (I haven't been able to learn to like the spices of Scandinavia) ...
What I find odd is that differences are so very dividing that we kill on the basis of them and may even be willing to kill or ostracize when an outsider or "a traitorous insider" articulates these differences. I remember taking a then 12 year old grand-daughter to see a professional baseball game. Before the game began, a guy in front of us had already consumed maybe 80 ounces of beer and was loudly complaining that if anyone said anything positive about this guy, Pujolz, from the opposing team, he would "bust their face." My grand-daughter thought it best that we not stay too long and, indeed, we left by the end of the second inning.
Hating the other! Hating anyone who speaks up for the other.
I wrote now some 20 years ago in response to Woody Allen's piece (Reflections of a Second Rate Mind) that called for a totally achauvinistic World in which categories didn't exist ... I wrote that I
thought it not possible but did believe there were gradations in Chauvinism ... I listed 4:
1. A state in which the existence of the Other is seen as intolerable ... the battle cry of this state of being is: "Don't convert ... just die."
2. A slightly more progressed state of being is represented by the Crusader's and ISIS's call: Convert or Die.
3. There is a 3rd state in which the right of the Outsider to disagree is maintained ... Lip-service is paid to the right of the Other to indulge their stupidities but no respect for the possibility that the Other's position may be well thought out.
4. The highest form, I suggested, was not achauvinism, not giving up my special relationship to my own thoughts, friends, neighbors or kids, but rather what the Latinizers call a Primus inter Pares ... a First among Equals point of view. In this mode of thinking and being, I come to recognize that others' relationships to their Gods and Thoughts and Relationships are just like my own to mine ... enormously special.
Watching the World fragment into warring factions in Irbil and in Syria, in Korea and St. Louis (Ferguson) calls into question for me Frost's suggestion that there are but two ways that the World may end ... He was, need I add, speaking of a more basic one (differences "worth" killing to defend) ... Frost wrote:
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
My two cents (influenced somewhat heavily by Dewey, and rather lengthy . . . do enjoy):
ReplyDeleteThe quest for certainty involves a quest for immutability. Difference(s) = change. And Change = uncertainty. If there is one thing we can be certain of, it is our dislike of change, for change is uncertainty and uncertainty engenders insecurity.
It is of no surprise to me, then, that people get frustrated when presented with another people's differences. Nor is it a surprise, to me, that people might become homicidally frustrated. By being different, just by being different, we threaten another person's (or whole people's) sense of certainty, that is, we threaten his or her sense of security. People respond differently to this threat: some ignore it, some may not even feel it nearly as much as other persons do. But, for certain, there are some of these "other persons" that not only feel the threat, but feel it backing them into a corner, or backing them to the edge of a cliff. (And we all know what happens then.)
Flannery O'Connor -- careful Dr. Covitz we're headed now into the land of Fiction -- wrote a wonderful short story centered around this phenomenon, called appropriately enough "The Displaced Person." A new man, Guziac, comes to Miss McIntyre's farm and, soon thereafter, the other tenants begin to feel themselves being displaced, one by one. In the end (spoiler alert) he dies, each tenant essentially having had a hand in Guziac's death. His death, though, comes to them not as cause for revelry but as the cause of a revelation, for through his death they finally see their sins, they see their hate and the fear that lurks beneath it . Disgusted with themselves, each leaves the farm disillusioned: Guziac suceeds, then, in displacing them, not only from the farm, but also from the fearful burden that is their sinful hate.
Needless to say, there's more to the story (Guziac is essentially Christ-like, hence his death). But in any case, I came away from that story thinking: "Hmm. This isn't merely fiction (I'm looking at you, Mr. I don't read fiction); this our world O'Connor's just presented us with here"
But what can be done? People will displace, feel displaced. Change will happen. Our security will be threatened. The Guziac's shall die at our feet.
On the bright side, Steven Pinker says, through all of this, were only becoming "better angels" (haven't read the book, admittedly, just going by the title). Like O'Connor, then, I guess he sees the "conflicts of difference" in our world influencing only further disillusionment like that disillusionment witnessed in O'Connor's The Displaced Person. Maybe he's right (again, haven't read the book). Maybe O'Connor ( a mere fiction writer, mind you) is on to something with her revelatory ending. I dunno.
My two cents.
So keep the change.
Or I'll "bust [your]face."
Just Kidding! Peace.
Pax vobiscum, too!
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