180. Not Like Us

You’ve done something I consider wrong. Your actions aren’t criminal but I still find them reprehensible. I tell you that what you’ve done is wrong, but you ignore me and you keep doing it. I cannot accept this and I feel I must distance myself from you. You are bad and I am not. You are not like me at all.

You are someone I cannot work with. You are someone I can only fight. You are my enemy, and the best I can hope for is to defeat you and bring an end to your wrongdoing. I will work with others who are like me and who agree with me that you must be stopped. Together we will form a group to oppose you and anyone like you. For you are not like us. You are outside of what is included in us.

But you will not allow me or my group to impose our will on you. You will also form a group of like-minded people to oppose us and stand for what you believe to be right and just. Now the lines of battle are drawn and conflict is guaranteed.

Our disagreement has exploded into a disaster that risks consuming us in hatred and hostility. The problem began not with our clash of values, where you acted in a way you judged to be correct and I judged to be wrong. The problem began not with me reprimanding you or with you choosing to ignore me. The problem began the moment I decided that you were different from me and that there was an impassible barrier between us.

This is not true now and it is not true ever. We are all human beings, members of a shared world and participants in the shared project of life. To see distinctions between us as permanent and uncrossable is a mistake. Communication is always possible. Cooperation is always possible. Compassion is always possible. To act in a way that inhibits these possibilities is only to abandon ourselves to hatred and guarantee further suffering for all of us.