Aging Capriciously

The other is anyone who you do not identify with.  It is anyone who is on the other side of the fence.  It is anyone who does not belong to your tribe, religion, political party, sports team, demographics, ethnicity, country club, neighborhood, gated community, state, country, or hemisphere.  It is someone who looks different than you do.  It is someone who thinks differently than you do.  It is someone who behaves differently than you do.  It is a stranger from a strange land.  It is a poor person who needs a handout.  It is a rich person who does not have to work hard.  It is a very educated person or perhaps a very uneducated person.

Other people do not belong.  Other people do not understand.  Other people do not get it.  Other people are often stupid.  Other people are often immoral and unethical.  Other people are probably evil.

I know these things about other people are true because everybody I know says so.  I know they are true because Fox News or CNN said that they were true.  I know they are true because my leader said that they were true.  I think I read it somewhere so it must be true or else I saw it on TV.

I don’t want to live near other people.  I don’t want other people to live near me.  I don’t want my kids playing with the children of other people.  I don’t want my children growing up thinking like other people.

Why can’t more people be like us?  What is wrong with these other people?  Do these other people read too much or spend too much time in school or maybe they don’t read enough or don’t spend enough time in school.  Where do these other people get these crazy ideas from?

I just wish we could all get along.  I try to treat everyone the same, just as long as they are not any of these other people.  I have told my kids to be polite and respectful to everyone just as long as they are not any of these other people.  My spouse and I always go to Sunday service and we pray for these other people when we are there.  One of my favorite prayers is as follows:

Lord, please hear my prayer,

I want to pray for these Other people.

Please help them to see the evil of their ways.

Please help them to find a way to believe in the same God that I do.

Please help them to be more like me.

Lord, if they refuse to repent the evil of their ways,

Could you please strike them dead?

One of my best friends and I were recently discussing the current mania with “Identity.”  There has been much talk these past few years over the issue of Identity politics.  Identify politics has been defined as:

“A tendency for people of a particular religion, ethnic group, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.”

This mania with identity presents a problem in the political arena where compromise has long been a foundation of good government.  The concept of Identity has so polarized people that they now view the “other” side as having no validity and even in many cases being EVIL.  The problem of Identity has metastasized from the political arena to the wider social arena which includes almost every aspect of life on the planet.  I think it is safe to say that Identity has always been at the heart of conflicts since the Tower of Babel and perhaps Adam and Eve.  Did Eve feel inferior to Adam and want to one up him?  Some recent headlines about the concept of Identity include:

• LGBTQ groups sue over Iowa law banning library books and gender identity discussions
• Stop Identity Attacks: Discover the Key to Early Threat Detection
• Is Buffy Saint-Marie Indigenous? Ancestry Questioned
• How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation
• Israel’s political identity crisis: Right divided, left reevaluating
• Why Democrats Lose When They Play Identity Politics
• Brexit as an Identity: Political Identities and Policy Norms
• How Does Geography Play a Part in Rural Identity and Politics?
• Gender identity and political evil

My friend Bruce is not a naïve person, and he is very well read.  He wondered if we could ever get along with others without the need to resort to Identity.  Could the Crusaders and Muslims have avoided fighting over which God would be worshipped?  Could England and France have settled their differences without the 100 Years War?  Could Lee Harvey Oswald have simply written a letter to JFK expressing his disagreements or whatever animosity he had towards Kennedy? 

The famous guru and Indian philosopher Osho believed that war could never be eliminated from the planet because of how it was valued by humans.  Osho wrote:

“It has never happened.  Man has never found peace exciting.  It seems that is the way man is, war certainly will remain exciting, because the peace that you know is not the real peace; it is the peace of a cemetery, not the peace of this mandir!”  (Note: A mandir is a Hindu temple or place of worship)

We might argue whether Osho is right but consider the many long and frequent wars that have punctuated any peace on this earth.  My guess is that most of these wars had to do with Identity.  A very important question might be to better understand the role that Identity plays in life and how the negative aspects of this role can be eliminated or at least mitigated.  For instance, when we sing school fight songs that extol our virtues over the virtues of our rival schools.  Here is the University of Michigan fight song:

Hail! to the victors valiant

Hail! to the conquering heroes

Hail! Hail! to Michigan

The champions of the west

One of the high schools that I substitute at has their mascot as, “The Spartan Warriors.”  Their fight song goes:

Bravely, we fight to win the test

Nothing to fear for we are the best

Fight on Spartans to the end

And bring home the victory

Perhaps you find these fight song references trivial but when our young people get a constant never-ending chorus of exhortations to fight on and to fight to the end, it makes me wonder what impact this has on their psyches.  Combine this with the fights on cinema and the violent video games and I would argue that the Spartans had nothing on our society when it comes to training their youth for violence and warfare.

Mark Twain wrote a famous story which he asked not to be published until after his death.  The story was called “The War Prayer.”  A church service is being held at which several soldiers are getting ready to go off to war.  The chaplain has just given a prayer for the soldiers welfare and victory.  A stranger enters the church and asks the chaplain to say a few words.  Reluctantly the chaplain agrees.  The stranger starts off by referring to the war prayer that the chaplain gave to instill morale in the soldiers.  The stranger notes that there are really two prayers that have been said.  One has been spoken and the second one unspoken.  The stranger then says that he will speak what was really asked for in this prayer:

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.  O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.  Amen.”

We have a world where humans have begun to take war for granted.  It is either too easy to do nothing about war as we watch our favorite sports teams fight it out or Osho is right, and we crave the excitement that death and destruction bring to the planet.  If we truly want to end war and violence, we must start to see everyone on the planet as a people that we are part of.  There must be no “others.”  We are all part of one large tribe.  Just as the water, soil and air are part of a seamless whole, so is humanity.  Benjamin Franklin said, “Either we all hang together, or we all hang separately.”  I think we might say something similar for humanity.  Either we all live together peacefully, or we shall all die separately apart.”