Why We Can’t Become Enemies
Especially when politics teach us to
By a random slip of fate, I grew up between two countries that are at silent war. The war started a long time ago, and even when it wasn’t a ‘cold one’, and things were going normal, there was no real sense of normalcy — there would be little jokes and pinpricks and suspicious kinds of looks and social downplay.
Being unconsciously stuck in a cultural ‘cold war’, I tried to mix in as well as I could. The word ‘mix in’ sounds neutral enough. In reality, this means I tried to melt in, disown my culture, assimilate, so no one would notice where I came from. In fact, I didn’t want to come from anywhere. I, like most kids, wanted to be normal — and that meant ‘same’.
I understand now, and understood just a short while later, that same isn’t possible, and same isn’t normal. Special thanks to my 3rd grade teacher in a small NJ town who, without even knowing she was doing something I’ll always remember, taught us how to be proud and not disowning of our heritage. Her one project and one lesson meant a lot for one nine-year- old, confused child whom she’ll never see again.
I grew up between two countries at silent war, but politics have never been my cup of tea. I always thought that if those running for office fulfilled even a quarter of their campaign promises, we’d be living in paradise by now and wondered — how is it possible to believe anyone who actually talks for a living? But whatever my personal views, 2019 isn’t a time to be politically mute. Too much is at stake in the world. Frankly, our world itself is.
Every day, as I turn on the television, I see a comedy of errors play out. Since that first lesson that taught me cultural independence, I’ve come a long geographical way — back to the country that birthed me biologically and culturally — yet incredibly richer with the experience of half my life lived on the other side of the world (geographically and mentality-wise).
This very day, as I watch the nasty politics unfold between our countries, it hurts me deeply that political conditioning is powerful and successful as ever. It hurts that a world which can live at peace chooses to create war — even if not a war of bombs but “only” a war of blasphemy and mutual accusations. It hurts me that an overwhelming amount of mass media is a marketing tool, not a documentary one. And that in the age of instant access to information, we have so much information that we don’t trust any — anything can be faked, and any of us can be duped. It hurts me that we believe in fake news and never see the real suffering and death caused by the actions of those in power because we’re taught aggression is “justified” when it’s a means to a patriotic end. It hurts that some people still think a bloody means can lead to anything but a bloody end or that “democracy” covers stains of blood. Most of all, it hurts when the people I grew up with hold such views, people who aren’t strangers, even if I don’t know them personally.
I grew up in the USA of daily “War on Iraq” footage in the aftermath of September 11th. I never held anything against patriotism. Pledges of allegiance, the national hymn every morning at school — that was serious stuff. So were the lockdown drills we had every month following the attacks, sitting lined up against a wall with strictly closed shades and mouths. Exactly like that, thirty years earlier, my parents sat under their school desks in their country across the world. Perhaps that’s why our countries are constantly at ‘cold’ or ‘hot’ war — we’re alike in quite a few ways.
Courtesy of my stepfather, we had a bundle of the latest newspapers in the house daily — all of them with front-page ‘war’ news, a war everybody hated but no one actually saw. So much the easier it was to hate. So much the easier it was to accept graphic execution images of this or that Middle East tyrant. We, as the world’s leading nation, were never physically involved in war but were always right about war — there was no question the country knew what it was doing.
It was only years later, that a senior friend confided to me her apprehension about the national policy on war in the Middle East. It was only when things started to get out of control and information started leaking about the bloody realities of the war no one ever saw through an unconditioned lens. It was only then that people started talking in hushed voices whether they were blindfolded and manipulated into encouraging war all this time…and they were really scared. It was scary to think, even for a moment, that all you were taught to believe over years and years was the projection of a purposefully disfigured lens.
Today, both the USA and Europe are standing on the verge of what may become a substantial test for our humanity — and of our humaneness. A test of what we’re capable of deciphering and believing and whether we choose to trust what we research for ourselves, or the stuff we’re spoon-fed by those in power.
Today, we’re no longer silent. But we’re still questioning. We’re still doubtful. We’re once again being taught hatred rather than patience and dialogue, and we stand on the verge of giving in to hatred, personal dissatisfaction, and our differences. We stand on the verge of becoming tools and pawns in the hands of those who have just about the same respect for our lives as they do for those whom they freely kill to justify their politics.
And yet, we have a choice. We have more — we have immense power to start thinking by ourselves. We have power to never allow anyone to condition us again — culturally, politically, socially. That power is what those in power fear most about us. That power may also hurt — because to move forward, the world has yet to admit: there is no “world leader” and there is no “best country”.
Unless we let go of that conditioning for good, we stand at risk of being manipulated by it again and again — as the world has been by tyrants and Fascists in decades past, every one of whom propagated to its nation the promise of becoming ‘best’ at the “small expense” of someone ‘worse’ becoming extinct.
Our real strength, unity, and power lies in acknowledging:
None of us is ‘best’.
None of us is ‘same’.
We’re all in this (world) together.
And we can all strive to become more united and understanding of one another every day, as long as we don’t give in to becoming enemies — like our real enemies want us to be.
