Tag Archives: otherness

Degrees of Separation

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 23, 2024- The individual, always congenial and engaging in the past, did a complete 180 today, glaring at all but a few chosen co-workers, and tersely responding to well-wishes. Fortunately, this turnabout did not get directed towards children, but was rather puzzling to the rest of us. It was hopefully just the result of a random bad day.

Things like this put me on guard, though, as there were many mercurial and unpredictable people in my childhood, mostly teenagers, but several adults as well. I learned to be very guarded, a tactic my mother also stressed was essential for my safety and well-being. That mantra has played in my background ever since. It was playing today, though fortunately the children with whom I worked were co-operative and appreciative.

This brings me to the matter of the separation, the barriers people put up, even against those who clearly mean no harm. Groups do this also, and with a vengeance. In the worst cases, there are laws, ad hoc groups and social customs that enforce separation. More commonly, language speaks to the barriers: Prefixes, like “anti”, “un” and “non”, meant to enforce “Us vs. Them”; Nouns and adjectives, like “alien”, “illegal”, “filthy”, “degenerate”, even “homeless” are employed to suggest that someone’s presence is an impediment to the well-being of the dominant society.

Arguably, none of us can be sweetly all-accepting of all behaviours. Yet, I can’t get past the notion that, in the Divine Creation, there is no other-unless the construct that Jesus the Christ called “Satan” or “the devil” is somehow to be maintained as a competitor to the Creator. The lower nature of the human mind, which is what was really meant by that construct, is also behind the us vs. them mindset. Without fear, hate and envy, there is no “other”; there is only us, only we.

When the out-of-sorts individual gets past whatever caused the anger shown today, perhaps there will be one less person towards which my guard will need to be maintained. That is the joy of not seeing anyone as “the other”.

The Others

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Social

SAM_8808

Later this evening, I will post about the Prescott Historic House Tour, part of our city’s Sesquicentennial Celebration, and Chalk It Up, an annual chalk-art festival.  Both took place this past weekend, as did a Cinco de Mayo Block Party, in Courthouse Square.

First, though, a bit of seriousness.  Let me go further with what I wrote yesterday about the journeys on which each of us is embarked.

Human beings, alone among species, sort those they see as strangers into categories of “race”, skin tone, ethnicity, Faith, gender and sexual orientation( of course, we are the only species which experiences the latter as a life condition).  To be sure, other animals, from ants to prairie dogs to wolves and dolphins, sort by family group and/or territory.  This is all part of territoriality and population control.

Our extra selection processes, really, don’t make much sense.  There is no qualitative difference between me and any of my friends who happen to be Black, but in the 1960’s, there was no way any of them would have been able to live in a family home in the town where I came of age, outside of a small designated area on the south side of town.  That’s changed now, of course, and it was with great personal satisfaction that I learned, in 1996, that my maternal grandmother’s house was purchased by an accomplished attorney of African-American descent.

I thought of all this, while taking in the various events of Cinco de Mayo weekend, in downtown Prescott.   People of all backgrounds are welcome here.  Although Prescott has a tendency towards political conservatism, there seems little bigotry.  Those of us who indulge in politics at all, tend to be of Libertarian bent.

I’ve always had a hard time understanding prejudice, and while working to rid myself of my own pre-conceived notions, which I found confusing, the whole concept of “Other” had to be allowed to surface, and float away.  Young Black men, when I was in my twenties, did me the honour of challenging me to show that I was recognizing, and casting aside, the subtleties which I had picked up in childhood.  I was hurt and angered by my white peers’ callous reaction to the killing of  Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.  He hurt no one, and helped as many of us as would listen to what he had to say.

Still and all, I have had to recognize my own sense of  “Other”.  This separation is a worldwide thing, though.   Many East Asians have trouble with Whites and Blacks being in their midst.  Africans separate by tribe; West Asians, by Faith; Russians, by language.  Some of this “otherness” is rooted in hurt; some of it stems from fear.

The fact remains, however, that we are all connected.  I see this sense of connectedness increasing, incrementally, among Millennials and the current generation of children.  It’s definitely a process, not an event.  Racist teens and twenty-somethings, though, are regarded by the majority of their peers as having mental problems.  This cuts across all racial and ethnic groups, and political affiliations.

The kids are onto something.  “Otherness” is a learned paradigm.  Then again, so is helplessness.