(*) This observation usually produces a complaint from a few indignant freshmen, usually rich Anglo-Saxon kids, that if I "only knew how much pain bigots caused", I "wouldn't write something offensive like that". Given that I got to spend much of my late childhood and early adolescence dealing with Klan wannabees who had an issue with my religion, ethnicity, and "racial impurity", I find myself torn between a desire to laugh at, and to strangle them, not necessarily in that order. "Yeah, Bif, I'll try to guess what that would be like."

It must have been rough for them, up there in Kenilworth.

"Peace", most of the time, means making peace with people you don't like, and never will. The alternative to accepting this fact, is Bosnia. Most people have a strong and abiding dislike for most other people, and where people have failed to work past that, they've ended up shooting each other. So a bit of compromise is called for.

Welcome to reality, kids. We've been waiting for you.

(1) "Well, aren't you in favor of a brotherhood of man", some will ask.

That depends on what you mean by brotherhood. "Ah", I'll start, "you mean a world where each can live life on her own terms". (Liberals love it when you use the generic feminine). "Yes, you understand", they'll say, with a hint of relief in their voices. "But you don't", I'll counter.

For most of mankind, life on one's own terms, is not a thing one can do on one's own, any more than one can fill one's apartment with refreshments, and hold a party on one's own. It is something that can believed only in the context of a specific community, with specific traditions, and if the community is washed away, their freedom goes with it. The introduction of a heavy, culturally alien presence into an established society, has historically, almost invariably, had just that impact.

The fallacy behind this fashionable concept, is that it presupposes that there are only two layers of society, or maybe three at the most - that of the sole individual, that of the entire mass of society, and maybe that of the immediate nuclear family. In other words, as an atomised collection of individuals, away from home. But that's not how people interact at all, when alternatives are available.

In traditional societies, the nuclear families are components of extended families, which are members of still larger associations ... Now. let me pose an absurdity to you. What would become of family life, if we decided that the family home was no longer indivisible? That little Billy could rent out a corner in his room to a drifter, in exchange for a few baseball cards ? It would be the end of privacy, and of family life, because the family would have no alone time. The feeling of being united as a family, of having that shared experience, would be lost, because those trying to share it, would constantly be in the presence of those completely outside of it.

The feeling would be lost, and belonging is about feeling.

In a traditional society, the community is a home, for a family of families, bound together by shared traditions, and an alien cultural element in its midst, does the same to destroy that feeling of commonality, that the drifter in Billy's bedroom, does to the feeling of family cohesion. "Well, that might be nice and quaint", some will start, "but you have to accept change as the price of progress". But progress according to whose definition, and measured by what standard? Not every trend is destiny, or represents an improvement.

So, let me pose an alternative to this limited conception of the "Brotherhood of Man". Recognise that you are not truly living in peace with another, unless you are at peace with that which being a part of, fundamentally defines him. Forget the "Brotherhood of Man". It's unachievable, and the attempt to establish it is an imposition.

That's not to say that we forget the far different concept of Brotherhood among men, but that we speak of a Brotherhood of Nations, as well, one of Cultures and Communities, in which each cares enough to come to the aid of the other, and respects the other enough to learn from it, but knows that the truest measure of one's love for one's neighbor, lies in one's treasuring of his individuality.

(return)