Of Xenophobia and Instinct

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, the social media world, the media world in general, and the general world in general, have all erupted in mourning, debate, accusations and incriminations. The responses are neither surprising or new. But their very consistency lends itself to self-analysis and potential learning. Though neither seems likely.

The first response of many is one of fear and fight. The attack in Paris is seen as a threat to all Western life in a way that the similar bombings in Beirut a few days earlier were not. In a way we can understand and, more importantly, imagine happening to us, the way death and destruction caused by war on a country's own soil is not. Paris is a proxy for all the West and demands a response because it is us. We cannot so simply turn away.

The world is too large to grasp and appreciate, so we reduce it to similarities and the familiar. In so doing we deny its truth, we miss the universalities disguised by surface differences. We look for ourselves in everything and miss it everywhere.

So we vow revenge. We demand action. We send in the planes and drop the bombs and trust that we kill for noble reasons, out of self-defense, and our actions are in no way comparable to the enemy's. That we have killed more civilians on their side than they have on ours is irrelevant. That the extremists have killed more of their own kind than ours is irrelevant. They are all the same if we lack the ability to tell them apart. If we kill them all we will surely get the right ones among them.

At the same time, we flight as well as fight. We call to close our borders. To expunge those who might be the enemy simply because they belong to the same general group of people. We do this only when the attack comes from a minority, a segment of society that is easy for the majority to disparage and eliminate. When white men commit atrocities, when Christians commit disgraceful acts in the name of their god, we cannot run away. Because we are them.

The other is the greatest threat to the self. It challenges everything held dear; it weakens every belief and threatens every foundation. It brings us together in defense of the common good and unites individuals into a community. And in so doing, we lose our selves to the masses and the war is already lost.

We look for a simple answer and the obvious truths. Bad people exist. They are a threat to us. If we eliminate them we will be safe. But people are merely the pawns of movements, ideas brought into action. We make no attempt to find the root cause or change the thought process. If people hate us for our militarization and interference, we will send our military to interfere some more. We believe those who tell us it will work this time, in spite of so recent memory that they've said that before. We'd rather believe the obvious lie that comforts us than an inconvenient truth that scares us more. We need satisfaction now - justice is swifter through violence than education.

The grand gesture is rarely a lasting sentiment. The immediate response seldom a solution. If we have any hope to make change, to improve life, it will only come piecemeal, over generations. What is done long after the fact will decide what comes next.

There is naked evil in the world, and Islamic extremists represent one face of it. But there are many forms of hate, many ways in which we deny what's noble about humanity and reduce ourselves to an instinctive drive to survive at all costs. When we vilify those of with different beliefs because a tiny percentage have wronged us, when we show compassion for those who look like us but turn our back to those of a different color, when we respond to hatred in kind, we lessen ourselves.

We can resist. We can pause to consider and use our higher principles and rational brains to seek understanding and learn a new approach. We don't need to cower in fear or strike out in anger. We can fight back and show strength through character instead of belligerence. Doing so would take a bravery I fear we lack. It would value the long-term result instead of immediate satisfaction. It would value all people equally and improve the world for more than just ourselves. It could work. It won't happen. It's why I mourn for Paris - not because of the immediate tragedy, but because it belongs to a world where it will inevitably happen again.

Empathy, or lack thereof, appears to be the core problem of human relations. We misunderstand, miscommunicate, and misrepresent each other in a constant struggle to declare our own truths to be universal and undeniable. We simply lack the ability to think in a way other than how we’ve learned to think. If we are forever limited by our own experiences we will never come to understand the other until we experience more than ourselves.