The trouble may have started with an itinerant Jewish preacher a couple of thousand years ago. Boy, did that guy have some kooky ideas. One of the things he said was, “love your neighbor”. How crazy is that? I mean, humans are pack animals. Instinctually, they only care about those in their group. Everyone else is Other, the enemy, not worthy of consideration as fellow human beings. But this guy was calling for people to disregard those boundaries, to actually care about people outside of their little group.
Of course, the whole thing hinges on who your neighbor actually is. There seem to be two basic approaches to this. One is to expand the definition of neighbor to include as many people as possible. The other is to exclude as many people as you can. The second approach is very understandable. As mentioned above, it’s default human behavior. And, hey, it’s so draining to care about all those people! So why not shrink your neighbors to as small a group as possible—that way, you can comfortably ignore and/or hate so many more people? It’s certainly easier than caring!
There are lots of ways to exclude people. You can restrict yourself to caring only about yourself, or your family if you must. Maybe your friends. You can let authority figures tell you who the Others are. Your parents, your pastor, your Congressman, the guy on the radio, the President—one or more of them should be able to tell you. Or, you can exclude people because they don’t believe the same things as you. Or if they look different, or speak a different language, or try to stubbornly hold on to some aspects of their native culture when they move into your neighborhood. If you’re really feeling generous, you can extend your circle to include everyone in your whole country—well, at least the ones who think like you; the others are obviously traitors or worse. Same thing for the people in those countries our leaders identify as allies; but if they’re not with us, they’re against us!
The Others are different from our Neighbors. They don’t value families. They don’t love Their parents or Their children. If a few of Them live in poverty, or are stricken with disease, or if They die, no big deal. It’s not like They’re our neighbors, for Pete’s sake! It’s debatable if They even have the same emotions that We do. One thing’s for certain, though—They’re trying to destroy Our way of life. They want to tear down everything We hold dear. They want Us to be more like Them, when it’s obvious that They should be more like Us.
Imagine how terrible it would be if everyone on Earth was your neighbor. Then you might begin to care if some people are suffering when you’re not, even if they live in another country. You might feel compelled to try to help those less fortunate than yourself, or even to work for justice for all people. How exhausting! You’d have to admit that you don’t have all the answers, that you might be wrong about some things. You might even have to give up your feelings of superiority, that everyone else would be better people if they could just be more like you. How horrible! See what a slippery slope this is? Once you start loving your neighbor, who knows where it will lead?
Disclaimer: Results may vary. See your doctor for more details. May cause cynicism if used improperly. Some parts of this blog contain irony that may be unsuitable for people from the vicinity of Betelgeuse. The author of this blog has no official credentials in sociology, anthropology, theology, or philosopy, and may, in fact, have just been crabby when she wrote this.
