I remember watching a Jim Carey movie a while ago titled, "The Truman Show." In that movie, Jim Carey's character, Truman, was bought by a corporation when he was a baby and he was raised in a TV set, in what the corporation owner thought would be an idealized world and video taped Truman's every move. Truman fell in love with an actress and wanted to pursue her and he wanted to go wherever she was located. We were shown that in geography classes Truman was taught that where he lived was the best place to be and no other place was better than where he was at. When he went to a travel agency to buy a ticket to travel out of town he was told there were no tickets, flights, and was asked why he would want to leave paradise, since there was no better place out there in the world other than his hometown.
Currently, I live in a small town where many members of the community remind me of the characters in the Truman show. They have never stepped out of their town, not seen anything else beyond their immediate neighborhood, and even those who have been somewhere outside of town, cannot situate themselves broadly in the world, as members of humanity. Flying patriotic paraphernalia made in China in their front lawns, they boast of being the best because of where they live, groups they belong in, and dismiss any need to know or learn about anyone else other than themselves.
It is this kind of thinking that creates "Us versus Them" divisions in the world. It is this provincial thinking that makes us only take care of our backyards and say, "We are the best and fuck the rest." It is this mentality that justifies not having healthcare for all, "Sucks to be you if you're poor and sick." As long as it is not in my backyard, I don't have to look, pay attention, or think how we might be connected. It is this very same mentality that our politicians use to justify the socialized healthcare they enjoy but are unwilling to pass it onto the people they purport to serve because all we need to care about is our immediate group in which we belong. It is the same reason why we don't speak up with utter disgust when human rights get violated around us in various ways, privacies invaded, people prisoned without a chance to defend themselves, because they are not part of our group, family, church, community, neighborhood in which we belong.
I don't understand this mentality on any level. Isolating ourselves is akin to burying our heads in the sand and pretending nothing else exists with any kind of merit or value outside of our groups with which we identify, akin to how Truman was socialized to believe. Existing in separation has never been my style. At the core of my being, I see such moves to exist in isolation and separation not only as an arrogant and colonizing move, but also as a misguided move. We create false boundaries, divide the people of the world up in this and that group and then we compare and contrast, get into pissing contests, and start wars. We look at those who are not us with suspicion, not with generosity of spirit. Because they look different, sound different, believe in something different, or worse, they make us feel threatened because they are able to achieve something with more ease than we are able to.
I wish for a day when humanity is not caught up in separation, boundaries, divisions, and the associated arrogance, narcissism, ignorance, and the associated ethnocentrism such ways of thinking bring. We are in this existence on earth together. Our differences eclipse compared to the similarities we share. I wish that as a culture, humanity would abandon its needs to exist in isolation and discover the strength of connection across commonalities, shared passions, and build solidarities. There is power in our connection, in how we come together, in how we relate and understand each other, in our ability to be compassionate, in our ability to relate to people who might hold views that are remarkably different from our own. Until and unless we can see each other as different versions of ourselves expressed and manifested in multiple forms, some remarkably similar, some masked to be extremely different, we will continue to be divisive, quarrel, separate ourselves, and live in isolation reinforcing the discourse and epistemology of "Us versus the Rest of the Fuckers." Yet, I cannot shrug off that as a whole, in this project of humanity, where we come together to learn, lift each other up, journey with each other, laugh, cry, be silly, we are together, part of a larger collective consciousness. Never in isolation. Never alone. I end with a quote that Lubna Chaudhry wrote that is very near and dear to my heart. "Though I tried I could not really write my story. Each time I tried to write, everything splintered into little bits. I had no clear picture of what unified it all. We are all in it together, that’s all I know."
