Us & Them

Us & Them

Ways of defining a them …

1. They believe in a vision of the world not connected to any reality you can perceive. For example, a book we have is the word of God and it tells us how to be in the world so that when we die, we will be rewarded with spending eternity in a place called heaven.
2. They are wealthy, and because they see this wealth as necessary for their happiness in this world, they are not willing to diminish this wealth by sharing with those less fortunate. For example, an unwillingness to consider a single payer health care system that would cover everyone.
3. They choose to ignore science when it’s telling them that the ship they are on is sinking because they are still dry. For example, global warming is a hoax because it still gets cold in the winter.
4. They see themselves as superior to others who have a different skin color, or come from a different part of the world or do not accept the book they have chosen as the word of God or are the wrong gender or choose to love someone of the same gender. For example, they are against same sex marriage or want to suppress the black vote or want to stop immigration from other countries.
5. They do not accept that problems exist that cannot be solved unless we come together as a group and agree on what needs to be done. For example, we should not be a member of the United Nations and governments cannot be trusted.

Ways of defining an us …

1. We cannot allow those who believe in what we cannot see to determine how we should be in the world. For example, making abortion illegal.
2. We do not want to live in a world where quality of life is dependent on how wealthy you happen to be and opportunities are limited for those less fortunate. For example, lack of support for education and minimum wage.
3. We can’t allow them to continue to participate in the sinking of the ship that we are all on. For example, not supporting reducing carbon dioxide emissions to limit global warming.
4. We don’t want to live in a world where people are made to suffer because they were born the wrong color or speak the wrong language or feel attracted to the wrong sex. For example, penalized for same-sex attraction or excluded from real-world opportunities because your skin is the wrong color.
5. We can’t allow serious problems to go unattended because their solutions require the participation of all of us. For example, addressing global warming on a planetary scale and dealing with failing ecosystems as a result of our overpopulating the planet. 

  There are those who would suggest that we all just need to come together and hash out our differences and move forward in the world. But this is just wishful thinking. Of course we should attempt to understand our differences thru communicating with others whenever possible, but people don’t change who they are until their perceptions are shown, through their own experience to be not in their best interest. We can’t make them see what they are not ready to see and attempts to do so simply pull us onto argumentative spaces that are of no avail. In the end, we are confronted with simply doing as much as we can to limit the damage inflicted on the world by the actions of those others who can’t even perceive that the damage is being done. Sometimes this might just mean countering their vote in an election with our own but, at other times, it might mean using physical force to keep them from damaging the environment or even ourselves or others who they have labeled as them. 

  This is how evolution works. There is always a battle between those who see the need for change and those who are too invested in the status quo to allow things to change. And these confrontations can go from a heated discussion to a fight to the death. Whatever form they take, we can’t decide not to participate because that requires us to accept conditions that are not acceptable and brings an end to our evolution. There is no happily forever after in the real world, there is only constant change moving us forward in a journey from one experience to another. And when we can allow these experiences to be our teachers, they take us to new places and higher realms where the true reasons for our being here can be known.

  There will always be an us and them because we need this tension to move us forward in our journey. There will always be levels of ignorance that need to be overcome and those unwilling to overcome them. This planet is a classroom and we either learn the lesson and move on to the next grade level or we do not and our journey comes to an end. No blame, it is all perfect and unfolding, as it should.