It never even occurs to me to actually write in my blog. I'm not sure why, really, since I muse on things constantly - it's just that if I'm not actually talking to another person, I don't feel overly compelled to express them. Plus I have the feeling that my own standards of clarity and cohesion would make the process more of a trial than a pleasure, and take far more time than I'm likely to want to devote to the process. I suppose that the next time I'm thinking about something, I'll try to find a handy keyboard and see if I can't bang out something.
This morning I was thinking about the pervasive importance of "same" and "different" when it comes to human psychology. I can understand where it comes from a social evolutionary perspective: as humans became increasingly reliant on intelligence rather than physicality to survive, individuals became far more vulnerable than communities, and the Us vs. Them mentality strongly promotes bonding and cooperation in a group. The thing that I find so fascinating is the ubiquity and power of this tendency throughout our history. It seems like group identity has been one of the primary (or perhaps THE primary) constant when it comes to human interaction on any scale. Be it a sense of identity based on religious principals, geography (from the level of villages to nations), language, race and ethnicity, philosophy, age, sex, or any of a seemingly unending list of attributes and beliefs, people are constantly aware of who is one of Us and who is one of Them.
The correlate of the sense of bonding and belonging between members of the former is the sense of fear and animosity towards the latter. It is the essence of group conflicts of any level; it would be impossible to imagine a war that wasn't based on the idea of "same" and "different" because it is the definition of war that two self-identified groups enter into a conflict based on a shared value, whatever it may be. Perhaps Col. Hunter Gathers expressed it best in The Venture Brothers: "The minute God crapped out the third cave man, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them!"
It seems like the struggle to overcome - or at least to master - this basic principal of our nature is itself a defining aspect of our struggle to be a more mature species. In politics of any level you can hear the constant attempt to both respect and honor the group identities that we admire (e.g., culture, patriotism, faith, community) and to decry and denigrate the group identities that we see as detrimental (e.g., racism, sexism, distaste of the poor). The fundamental inconsistency is that these are all based on exactly the same ideal; "cultural pride" becomes "racism", "patriotism" becomes "jingoism", and "community in faith" becomes "religious intolerance".
None of this is new; as I said, it seems to be a fundamental aspect of our evolutionary history. The positive aspect of this struggle is that it does push us to be more mature as individuals and in our respective groups. It is of course easier for people who have the luxury of a first-world lifestyle to muse on the evils wrought by the "us vs. them" nature of humanity; the more stress a person is under, the more powerful the drive to form protective alliances and groups becomes, and for good reason. I think that's the best argument for the immense respect we should have for groups that have managed to maintain tolerance and compassion even when under incredible stress. The very existence of the Buddhist religion in Tibet is all but miraculous.
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