44 years on this planet has taught me a lot.
What it taught me most though, is that we need to be kind to one another.
We need to give each other the benefit of the doubt. We need to assume the best in others, rather than the worst.
We are one humanity.
We create artificial divisions amongst ourselves – age, race, sexual preference, religion, political party, beliefs.
But they really are artificial, really.
You can be best friends with someone who is in ALL of the opposite categories of yourself, if you choose to be.
An old, white, hetero male christian Republican pro-lifer can ABSOLUTELY be best friends with a young, black, gay female atheist Democratic pro-choicer.
This IS quite possible, absolutely. But what does it require?
It requires that we look past all of the differences, and look towards our common humanity.
It requires that we care more about each other, as individual unique human beings, than we care about these miniscule differences between us.
We share 99.9% of the same DNA. I’m NOT making that number up –
That is fact, that is verifiable TRUTH. There’s nothing up for interpretation here. There is zero place for opinion here. We can literally take the DNA strands of any two random people on this planet, stretch them out and compare them side by side, and you will literally only find a 0.1% difference in their genetic codes.
So, why all the conflict? Because of a word that I’ve used so very often that I perhaps don’t explain well enough – TRIBALISM.
See, a little over 40,000 years ago, there were dozens of human-like species of primates existing, in the same time and place. We, along with our other hominid brethren, fought a war that lasted thousands of years. During that war, we fought against those hominids that looked different from us, and mated with those hominids that looked more similar to us. Because there were limited resources.
This war built within the survivors a natural instinct – an instinct to be suspicious of hominids that look or act similar to us, but that aren’t the “same” as us. Our survivor ancestors were the strongest and smartest of the hominid species, and we wiped out all opposition by either killing them, or making them “us” by mating with them, joining with them. And thus, humanity was born. By collecting “like” individuals and joining them to us, and either destroying or pushing away “diffferent” individuals. This is tribalism, essentially.
But, 40,000 years later, we haven’t evolved past this natural instinct.
We live now in a world of plenty. We have enough resources using our technology that we could feed, clothe, and shelter ALL of humanity at once and still have more left over to stockpile. The only issue is that of distribution.
However, we still try to suss out any of the remaining differences between us, and use those perceived differences to form ourselves into separate “tribes”, or groups of people. And then fight each other over it.
We are still suspicious of the motives and intents of those that are not of “our tribe”. We still have a natural inclination to push people away from us when we notice differences in them, and draw people closer to us that we perceive as the same. We still fight wars against others that we should be working WITH.
War is tribalism, made physical. And it’s been embedded into our instincts. We build it into every part of our society:
Us Vs. Them
Left Vs. Right
Red Vs. Blue
Republicans Vs. Democrats
Russia Vs. Ukraine
And we practice war, primarily through games of competition- sports. Sports literally creates artificial tribes of people, and has them “fight” against each other. Sure, for the most part these are nonviolent (certain exceptions notwithstanding), but they are still CONFLICT. And they still reinforce the concept of divisions between our people:
Packers Vs. Vikings
Brewers Vs. Cubs
Bucks Vs. Bulls
We CREATE differences, and then fight mock wars to see who’s better, who’s the victor. We even show pride in our differences, and wave flags, raise icons, mascots, and sing songs of solidarity.
We NORMALIZE the tribalist wars of our ancient ancestors. What’s worse though, is that we teach our CHILDREN to separate themselves into such groups, and then to fight against each other in mock battles of skill:
Badgers Vs. Gophers
Altoona Vs. Chippewa Falls
Shirts Vs. Skins
And yet, we’re surprised when those mock battles start to turn into real violence? We’re surprised when kids shoot up their school when they feel outcast? We’re surprised when a stupid kid barely out of high school shoots at an old man because of perceived political differences?
We shouldn’t be – that’s what we’ve been teaching them, from the ground floor up.
We need to use our God-given intellect to self reflect, and see what we’re doing to ourselves. See how we’re behaving towards each other. To see how we got to where we are today, and decide if that’s where we really want to be.
We need to teach our children kindness, acceptance, cooperation, and empathy.
We need to understand that this… URGE to separate ourselves into tribes is built into our genetic code at this point, so we don’t NEED to teach it and encourage it further. We don’t need to reinforce it and perpetuate it. We get it for “free”, whether we like it or not.
What we don’t get for free is being able to see outside of ourselves – to be able to perceive, understand, and feel the differences of others as a benefit, not as a drawback. As a strength, not as a hindrance. We don’t get this for free, it’s a skill that we have to earn, by practice.
Every person believes themselves to be the hero of their own story. If a person truly thought they they were evil, they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves.
Our challenge is to try to step OUTSIDE of ourselves. Step outside of our own perspectives, our own lives. To listen to others with different viewpoints – not in an effort to formulate a retort – but rather to try to UNDERSTAND. To see HOW the other person sees themselves as a hero.
To quote my favorite author:
“I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
And that’s what we need to foster – understanding, and love.
Realize the differences between us – not to separate others from ourselves – but rather to see them as strengths, as learning opportunities.
We must challenge ourselves and our own preconceived notions. We have to challenge our own “rightness”.
That’s probably the hardest thing of all – to truly challenge whether we’re right, and to strongly consider the possibility that we might be wrong.
The motto of the United States is “E Pluribus Unum” – “Out of Many, One”. We NEED to start taking this to heart.
We need to look at the Many and see how we are One.
It’s the only way that we ever WILL be.
