Everyday People—Sly and the Family Stone

#365Songs: May 29

Here’s the beautiful thing about inclusion. The easy thing. The obvious thing.

Here it is: There is no reason NOT to be inclusive.

I say it, but I will immediately disclaim it.

There is a barrier of entry to the Nation of Humanity. To belong, you have to accept a few rules. You don’t get the perk if you don’t do the work.

Ideally, all of us are citizens of this nation.

But some of us aren’t. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles. Those folks are exiles from the Nation of Humanity. Inclusion doesn’t have to include them.

For the rest of us, however, inclusion should be universal. No one excluded, everyone included.

The beauty of this, is that it requires literally NOTHING of you. You don’t have to do ANYTHING to allow black people to drink at the same drinking fountain. To allow women to bare their heads. To allow gay people to marry.

What? Look around! Hey, those gay people just got married! Did you have to do ANYTHING? Change ANYTHING? Suffer ANYTHING? No, you didn’t. Why? Because inclusion is actually really fucking easy.

Sometimes it IS harder. Yes, you do actually have to add a ramp to that curb so that someone in a wheelchair can safely cross the road and get back on the sidewalk. But guess what? If you’d have been inclusive in the first goddamn place, you wouldn’t have had to redo the sidewalk. See? It’s easy. Just START with inclusion.

Sometimes I’m right and I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song
The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then
Makes no difference what group I’m in
I am everyday people

We hear a lot about the “right to exist” these days. Particularly when someone brings up Israel.

Well, here’s the thing. Jewish people DO have a right to exist. And they DO have a right to come together and form a nation. And they DO have a right to a piece of land where they can establish, maintain, and inhabit that nation. That’s inclusion.

But here’s where it gets tricky. Do they have a right to one specific piece of land entirely of their choosing that they believe they alone should have dominion over? That sounds a little less inclusive, particularly when you see it from the perspective of anyone else who might want to be on that land.

There is a blue one who can’t accept
The green one for living with
A fat one tryin’ to be a skinny one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby
We got to live together

Which brings us to the primary currency of our Nation of Humanity: Compromise.

Inclusion is inherently paradoxical. Managing it requires a shift from “either/or” to “both/and.” (For more on this, please read Paradoxes of Inclusion: Understanding and Managing the Tensions of Diversity and Multiculturalism.)

This is how, for example, we deal with free speech.

As a citizen of the Nation of Humanity, my right to free speech is dependent on my willingness to afford others the same right. In other words, I have to be willing to let other people say shit I don’t like and disagree with, if I want the right to say what I want to say.

I am no better and neither are you
We’re all the same, whatever we do
You love me, you hate me
You know me and then
You can’t figure out the bag I’m in
I am everyday people

Managing both/and compromise often involves assessing degrees of agency and impact.

For example, Person A thinks women should not be allowed to breastfeed in public. Person B thinks they should. If we assess this through the lens of agency and impact, it’s immediately clear that the best compromise is the one in which women can breastfeed in public. Why? Because Person A has the agency to look away, and is not negatively impacted in any meaningful and tangible way by a women breastfeeding in public. On the other hand, if women are not allowed to breastfeed in public, this diminishes women’s agency and negatively impacts them, and they would have to find private locations to breastfeed.

There is a long hair
That doesn’t like the short hair
For being such a rich one
That will not help the poor one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on, scooby-dooby-dooby
We got to live together

Ultimately, as citizens of the Nation of Humanity, we have to live TOGETHER.

Sly and the Family Stone said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

Seriously, there’s enough to go around. There’s enough for everyone. There is enough money, land, and resources for everyone in the world to survive, thrive, and live in peace. But we have to compromise. We have to be inclusive. We all have to give a little. There is a price of admission. The currency is compromise.

But someone’s always gotta fuck it up, don’t they? Someone’s always got to get greedy and resentful.

The thing is, when drugs exist, someone’s going to take them. And when people start taking drugs, someone’s going to become an addict. And money and power are the most addictive drugs of all. And they’re the most dangerous. One man’s addiction to heroin will not cause a war. One man’s addiction to power will.

So someone goes and tastes a little extra money. A little extra power. And they get hooked. And before you know it, they’re doing anything and everything they can to fracture compromise, to fracture inclusion. They’ll turn anyone against anyone if that clash will produce enough energy for them to get another fix.

There is a yellow one that won’t
Accept the black one
That won’t accept the red one
That won’t accept the white one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and
Scooby-dooby-dooby
I am everyday people

If you pit people against one another so you can leverage and exploit their conflict to advance your own standing and feed your monkey, that’s an exilable offense.

In the Nation of Humanity, we’re all everyday people, and we all belong. But we must pay our bills in the national currency of compromise.

Scooby dooby dooby.

~

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