What’s Wrong with Making People Wrong?

From the time we were little children we have been told that we were bad: bad girl! bad boy! You’re wrong! Or worse: you’re stupid! Or worse: you’re fat! Or worse: you can’t tell your a____ from a hole in the ground, etc. etc. You catch my drift. When I was a little kid in the fifties you could tell the good guys from the bad guys in the western movies by their hats: good guys wore white hats; bad guys wore black hats. Things were so simple then. Lots of us still want people to be divided up into easy categories of  good guys, i.e. us, and bad guys, i. e. them. The world has grown a lot more complicated since then. But the tendency to categorize behavior as right or wrong, good or bad, and people too, as good or bad, with us or against us,  perpetrator or victim, friend or enemy is still very much with us.Once upon a time, the need to divide the world up into strangers and kinfolk and to immediately recognize the difference had a strategic survival value, and there are plenty of neighborhoods in Baghdad where I probably wouldn’t venture today. But the subject of this blog is peace, specifically new conversations for and about peace on this planet and that’s what I want to address here. Not only do we humans have a tendency to label behaviors and other humans as good and bad;  one might even say we are addicted or habituated to labeling each other that way. It’s a very dangerous and chronic habit that I suggest, might put the survival of the whole human race at stake. Think about how casually the police on all those law and order shows refer to their clientele as the bad guys. They are doing something heroic. They are saving and protecting the rest of the law abiding community, the so-called good guys, from the ones who would hurt them. And yet, we all know, that police officers themselves cross over the line into acts of brutality, racism and domestic violence. The scene in the movie Crash when the racist cop, played by Matt Dillon, degrades and humiliates the African American couple he pulls over on a pretext is so painful it’s almost impossible to watch. Why does that kind of thing happen and why does that scene ring so true?We have such little understanding or ability to forgive when our fellow human beings err or fail. We are full of scorn and righteous judgment about what they do what they should not have done or what we would not have done in their shoes. Yet, if the truth be told, how often have we also  stumbled, erred, and then excoriated and punished ourselves endlessly for our own mistakes, perhaps for a lifetime? We are curiously intolerant creatures. It continues to amaze me how much suffering human beings do. When I look  at the wind tossing the tree tops or ruffling the waters of Puget Sound, or watch my cat grooming himself, I realize that the natural world does not suffer as human beings do. The trees, the clouds, the wind, cats, birds, earthworms, they all just are. They do not whine or complain or moan. Above all they do not make each other wrong. Of course not–because they do not have language.

What does all this have to do with peace and the possibility of creating a world that works for everyone? I suggest that a world of violence starts in language, in words that are intended to hurt, divide and wound the heart, to separate us and to disconnect. Is it helpful to label our struggle with terrorists a “war on terror?” I heard Zbigniew Brzezinski speak on Charlie Rose’s television talk show the other night and he had some very apt comments to make about President Bush’s rhetoric about the War on Terror. No other country in the world, despite having suffered critical losses from terrorist attacks, considers itself to be on a “war footing” or that they are in a “state of war” with this nameless enemy. Brzezinski was very articulate in explaining his concerns that rhetoric tended to further isolate the US from other countries and to increase the polarization with the Islamic world. He made a lot of sense to me.

Our problem as a nation is that we don’t know how to hold two ideas at once: we don’t know how to affirm that violent acts are unacceptable  and at the same time to take a stand that we want to understand why the terrorists want to hurt us. We don’t know how to take an approach that provides room for an encounter with the “other”, that is our “enemy”, such that he or she can be engaged with, until such time that he/she becomes a former enemy or even a partner or friend, while at the same time disapproving strongly of the actions they have committed.  Most of us can barely put two such contradictory thoughts together at the same time. And yet, such things are possible and they do happen in our world with great frequency. The question is, how could they happen even more frequently and more reliably? My hunch is that if we gave up the rhetoric of  “you’re evil” and “we’re good” we might find ways of talking that bring us together instead of drive us apart.

We humans, I have found in my 58 years on the planet, long for connection, for laughter and for the ability to make a contribution to each other. When we made mistakes or failed, when for some reason we are removed or rejected from our communities, that rupture of connection is like death. If we are ever to make lasting peace on this planet, I believe we will have to find a way to bring people who have erred and fallen, back into the embrace of a caring community.

Questions of Inquiry:

1. Some wrongs, it is said, are just too great to forgive. What should our response be to overwhelming wrong? What should we do when confronted with a person who was a perpetrator in that wrongdoing?

2. If a person has done a great wrong in the past and traveled a path of great transformation and is seeking redemption, or return to the community, what should our response be?

3. What are practices that one can take on to get over the habit of making people/things wrong?