A trap for fools

 It seems to me that we live simultaneously in 2 worlds, and neither of them is fully real.  Let me explain... We all believe that we are good, decent and honourable people, who live (mostly) valuable lives, and who are kindhearted, care about our neighbours and friends, work hard, take care of our families and expect that we will be rewarded in time for our goodness, and evil / wrongdoing will be punished.  (Not ours, because we don’t do anything bad, so we should be excused our failings.) 

In my experience, this leaves people in 2 general groups.  The first group considers a stranger to be a friend we haven’t yet met, while the second considers a stranger to be a threat to existence.  The first group thinks that people are all generally trustworthy, and have to prove that they are unreliable.  They believe in second chances and the benefit of the doubt.  The second group considers that all other people (those who are not like us) are out to harm us, and will only grudgingly admit that they can be trusted in limited circumstances.  They believe in harsh punishments and seeking to blame.  Both groups are convinced that they are right and the other is wrong — often to a dangerous level — and that spending too much time with the other is harmful.  There are entire areas of the web that are devoted to reinforcing these views and deepening separations.  

Isn’t that easy?  Lovely, broad brush descriptions that make it easy to categorize people, so we can know how to react when faced with a new person.   We can each choose where we fit, and how we think outsiders or nonconformists should be treated.  Is that a fair assessment, though, of all people?  They fit into either column A or B, and they don’t overlap?  Or do we find that they’re more fluid, and are a bit of both?  And sometimes there are other options that fit, right?

I had a friend who argued strenuously for increased police presence at a busy intersection, and who would applaud and gloat loudly whenever a driver was apprehended for doing something illegal, like making a U-turn.  They would relate to the rest of us how exciting it was to watch these lawless drivers get their just desserts— until the day they chanced a U-turn at that intersection and were caught by an unmarked police car.  Then the police were blasted as incompetent, lazy, inept fools who should have focussed their efforts on “real” criminals, and not poor people who were trying to live their lives.  The thing is, my friend is not unique... pretty much all of us think that we should get a break if we ever run afoul of the law, even if we cheer when we see a speeder get ticketed.

My point, however long it’s taking me to get there, is that we’re all very much alike in everything that’s essential.  When Shakespeare wrote Shylock and the moving speech saying, hath not a Jew... it was simply a reminder that we are all the same.  Pricked, we bleed; we eat when hungry, cry when sad, etc.  One major difference is how we face the world. Not only the challenges that we face, but what we think of people who are different from us.  

But the 2 worlds that I mentioned at the beginning are the way that we think things are and the way that we wish they were.  We think that the world works a particular way, and when we’re in a comfortable position we naturally want it to continue.  But all things change, and when our world no longer fits what we thought, we can spend a lot of time wishing that it were how it was (and telling tales of how it used to be.)  The world really is not the way we think it is — and probably is not even how we thought it was!

I’m happy to see that there are still people willing to work to build a better world, to welcome strangers and collaborate to use our collective strength to lift up everyone.  I hope that there are enough of those to overcome the ones who want to retreat into a past that never existed, while keeping out new ideas.  It is something to work towards, where the two worlds merge into the world that is, better than memory.