While on a train bound for New York City I overheard a group of people talking to the ticket collector. They were talking about how one of them could have gotten a military discount on his ticket. This brought my mind to soldiers and the frequently reborn buzz word: patriotism. I thought of all the appreciation given to soldiers and wondered, "Why?" I don't ask the question because the individuals are bad people or undeserving of love, but more fundamentally, "Why should we promote the killing of other humans, for any reason?" This brought me to questioning the basic idea of patriotism.
Patriotism by its very definition requires at least two distinct groups of people. One group is typically the "good-guys" and the other must therefore be the "bad-guys". While the levels of good and bad may be analog, there is still a very much digital "us" and "them". This brings up endless questions of where to draw the line. It can be seen in the recent flood of news stories about the proposed mosque being built near Ground Zero. The entire Muslim religion has been labeled a "them" and our patriotism, along with our desire to find a target for our anger, shock, and fear, has blinded us to that fact. We crave justice, although no matter how many people we bring to that justice we are never satisfied; nor will we ever be, since in this case justice is just another word for revenge. Only by releasing the anger and fear we have stored in our hearts can we begin to move on and be happy. Unfortunately, that anger and fear will remain as long as "they" remain; not Muslims, but just the concept of "us" and "them". As long as an outsider, a perceived threat, remains, so too will the feelings of anger and fear.
One way of remedying "them" is to neutralize "them" through force, control, and eventually violence. In other words: War*. However, War is a band-aid over a bullet wound; unless we remove the bullet the wound will never heal. There will always be another "them" to replace the previous "them". The only way to remove the bullet and heal the wound is to remove the divisive monikers of "us" and "them". If we view each individual as just that, an individual human being living out their life as best they can, then there is no "them" just "us"; and why would we want revenge against "us"?
Once we can view the world as an "us" it becomes perfectly clear that fighting against "us" is futile and self-defeating. Which circles back to the point, "Why should we promote the killing of other humans, for any reason?" I find the greatest example of "us" thinking is the Christmas Truce of World War I in which the soldiers from both sides of the battlefield came together to celebrate Christmas and more importantly their similarities as human beings. Imagine yourself as one of those soldiers, would you be able to, after looking a person in the eyes, say to them that they deserve to die because they live under a different government, or because they look different, or because they hold different beliefs than yourself? In the end we all have the same 83 problems in life, and the only thing keeping "us" and "them" apart is our own concept that there is an "us" and a "them". Once that veil is raised "we" can be happy.
* On a small side note, am I the only one that finds the term "War on Terror" a bit of an oxymoron?
