Us and Them
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words
The poster bearer cried
"Listen son," said the man with the gun
There's room for you inside
Three days with my parents is usually enough, but this time my heart is swollen with complex emotions, and I don’t want to leave. I’ve learned, not just at an intellectual level, but at an emotional level, how deeply ingrained the concentric rings of division permeate American culture. Facebook’s algorithm is entirely confused about me at this point, recommending surveys from the RNC and Trump-supporting PACs, with wording so comically biased I thought I was reading satire. “Do you support Trump’s work to smash the constant lies from the Democrats, or do you rather enjoy murdering puppies?” It sounds like hyperbole but it’s not far off. But I’m not even fazed. I’m so numb and saddened by the increasingly steady, sinking feeling caused by the realization that we are decades if not centuries from any form of civil society. I will probably never feel like I am not in the midst of a battle; my parents certainly never will.
I rarely have genuinely well-constructed arguments with Christians—not to disparage Christians wholesale, but I simply don’t have many Christian friends these days, and most of the few tend to conclude arguments with “because the Bible tells me so.” One friend, who happens to be not only my oldest friend, but also an ex-cousin, against probability, has remained a refreshing face to see over the years whenever I visit Pennsylvania.
Walking down a back road through the 100-degree, humid Pennsylvania August air, I make the left, past the sunflower garden, across the lawn, and over to Doug’s house. I’ve come unannounced because my phone wouldn’t send texts until I fixed it, but I figured if he was there, I’d say hello. Doug is genuine, easy-going, down-to-earth. If he didn’t want to see me, he’d tell me to get the fuck off his property with a smile and maybe a beer for the road. I appreciate that. It means that if he does want to see you, you don’t have to worry about inconveniencing him, and you can just relax and shoot the shit, which we did for longer than I expected.
“What is the point of Christianity?” I asked. “Not in general. To you.” I wanted to understand the true value of belief to Doug. We talked about the gold tooth. We talked about origin, meaning, purpose, destiny, sin, homosexuality, salvation, and the afterlife. Regardless of how things got here, they are here, and somehow, we have to rationalize our existence. We passed over origin theories—there is no point. Doug has a personal relationship with God. In his own mind, God is real, Jesus is real, and God gives Doug the purpose to continue to be a better person on earth now. According to him, it was God who spoke to him during a particularly dark time, and sovereignly inspired him to refocus his energy on a more positive way of living. I mean, that’s awesome. I don’t think that’s the only way to bounce up from rock bottom. But it worked for Doug, and that’s fantastic.
You can’t be both things, you can’t believe in something from column A and something from column B, and you for sure can’t believe in something without being that something—without claiming it now as a feature of your identity.
We talked about the afterlife. Doug brought up Pascal’s wager. Sure, not believing in anything gives me 0 / infinity chances to… not burn in hell, I guess? Believing in one religious narrative gives you 1 / infinity chances to not burn in hell. As odds go, I’ll give him that he’s got a better chance at not burning in hell than I do. That being said, I can invent a religion based on a mushroom trip and probably nudge up to 0.5 / infinity. So if we can agree that the odds are irrelevant and salvation is 100% a faith-based decision and not an objective one, what still is the point?
Doug ultimately concluded that it was first a gut feeling, and not something that he could rationalize, and that he is okay with that, and secondly, something that is working for him. He believes he has a relationship with God, and it gives him purpose. Why the hell would he change? I respect that. That being said, the way we ended our conversation again reinforced the unfortunate reality of an exclusive worldview: if he believed in an afterlife and a judgement, and salvation only by faith in Jesus Christ, then it was fact, in his mind, that when I die, I will be tortured in hell for all eternity. Thus, because he cares for me as a person, this is now a heavy burden for him to bear. It is not my problem, but at the same time, I sympathize with this. No, I empathize with this. Whenever I see my parents making poor decisions that affect their lives right now, and there’s nothing I can do but watch, I feel the same pang of helplessness that Doug—and my parents—must feel when they look at me. What a shame.
So again, I’m met with the fundamental question of intellectual identity: are you with us, or are you with them. Are you a democrat, or are you a republican? Are you born again, or are you an unbeliever? Are you woke or are you not woke? Are you racist or are you not racist? There is no room to be anything on a continuum, you can’t be both things, you can’t believe in something from column A and something from column B, and you for sure can’t believe in something without being that something—without claiming it now as a feature of your identity.
As a culture, we’ve gone far beyond lazy abstraction as it relates to system of belief. We’ve not only abstracted away our identity, but we’ve gone so far as to appropriate an identity of conflict, that the point of being is to be right, to win, and to subjugate our opponents. This is so dangerous. It inherently queues up strawman and ad hominem arguments, and discourages thoughtful discourse based on respect for your fellow man. It discourages creative critical thought, and reduces your ability to learn something beyond your abstraction. Why? Because to change would be to lay an axe to the root of not just your thoughts, but your very identity.
Whether politics or religion, we must fight against the ensnaring “us vs. them” and fight for a better us, opening channels of communication, creating opportunities for learning. I have not had much success, but the success I have had was only made possibly be active listening and empathy without expectation of that returned to you.
In the last three days, I’ve enjoyed the company of my parents, but I’ve also had poisonous arguments with my mother. I realize that my parents, my mother in particular, has been fully inculcated into the “us vs. them” mentality. There is the right side and there is the other—and no good can come from the other. There is one religion, one politic, one way of living. A rigid, dogmatic perspective of how life is to be. But what’s worse—far worse—is that the point of it all at this point in society is to not strive for discourse and correction, but to be right at any cost, and that pernicious evolution of personal identity becomes quicksand to the soul.
I pine for a culture where it is more celebrated to be wrong, and after diligent consideration find a better way, than to be right and to crush those who oppose you—that it is better and more noble to change your mind than to not. There will always be differences of opinion. Ripples of belief emanating from even minute fluctuations within interpretations of our daily experience can compound into fundamental and powerful rifts. There will always be affinities and oppositions of thought, on a multidimensional level—where you agree with someone in one aspect, you may oppose them in another, so in that sense there will always be some notion of an “us”: people who see a particular issue in the same light, and a “them.” But I believe that for peace and harmony to triumph over civil war, we must change our values to elevate empathy over rightness, thought over laziness, and truth over selfishness, for both us and them.