What Do We Share?

"[...] I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that." 

William Shakespeare -The Merchant of Venice


We are by name The United States of America, and yet the best I can perceive we are a society more fragmented today than at any time I can recall in my 54 ( plus ) years. The Shakespeare quote above would work as well today if it replaced 'Jew' and 'Christian' with a host of other classifications. We are divided by political ideology, by race, by religion ( or the lack thereof ), by gender, by sexual preference, by education, by class, by the nature of our work, by rural vs urban, by geographical boundaries, by the entertainment we consume, by the art and hobbies that feed our passions, and by the sources through which we obtain the information that continually feeds our values.

The existence of this great degree of diversity can either be the source of our strength, resilience, and our hope for sustainability or it may serve as the accelerant that leaves us in pieces, unable to work together as we must to address the great challenges that certainly lie ahead. It is my view that if we are to have any hope of meeting these challenges we must find some common ground, and that common ground rests at it's most basic level within our shared humanity.

Within our shared humanity we have over and over again displayed both the capacity for benevolence, and the capacity for needless violence. We have shown the capacity for profound thought, and the capacity for thoughtlessness. The philosopher Hanah Arendt argued that thoughtlessness ( banality ) was at the root of evil, rather than the caricature of clear-cut viscious intent to do harm. It is in my opinion the absence of the awareness of our own frailty that projects outwardly as the need to display power. Thoughtless hate, ridicule and devaluing of those outside our ever tightening circles are often symptoms of a lack of self understanding in the larger picture of our shared humanity.  We cannot compensate for our own inadequacies purely by pointing what is to us obviously lacking in others. I believe we improve ourselves only when we can continually re-contextualize our existing values, identities, knowledge and understanding in a jointly shared process with those with differing life experiences.

We currently have no central source of news and information trusted by the majority of our population. We have almost no civil communication among those with different views. This is precisely the climate in which totalitarianism and inequality can thrive. Precisely the climate in which those who share a commonality in suffering from the same source of top down injustice are likely to place blame instead on those from whom they feel disrespected.

None of this requires dropping our values, lowering our voice, or ignoring injustice - I only hope that as we speak we can listen to our own voice, and that we speak not only as we would like to be heard but also as we would hope to be spoken to by others- From the place of compassion for the many.