Can’t we all get along?
Credit to Author: EI SUN OH| Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 16:38:37 +0000
I WROTE last week of my overwhelming emotion when my plane landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport where the revered opposition leader to a dictatorship was assassinated in cold blood. Alas, this week the mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, apparently motivated by racial and religious hatred, once again shook our collective conscience. It reminded me of when I was a student in California, when racially motivated unrest erupted in Los Angeles, prompted by the brutal beatings by white police officers of a black American, Rodney King. I can still recall vividly that during the riots, King came out to try to help calm down the unruly situation by saying, “Can we all just get along?”
Indeed that was a somewhat rhetorical but fair question at several levels: “Why can’t we get along?” Well, although most of us are born free, or with free minds, our world views and behaviors are rapidly and sometimes imperceptibly shaped by the culture and society around us. We derive a sense of comfort and safety by attaching ourselves to our surrounding groups (more and more online nowadays). I can see this quite clearly with my many relatives who perhaps share the same ethnicity but are scattered around the world. Most of them became accustomed to the cultural traits of where they grew up, and when there is a worldwide reunion of these relatives, you could almost feel the awkwardness of those from different backgrounds having to interact with each other, which sometimes reminds me of the cliché but “heavy” phrase “clash of civilizations.”
In any case, this sort of almost natural clinging to the culture and society that one is most familiar with, when met with recurrent scarcity of resources around the world, can sometimes lead to very negative consequences. When certain resources critical for sustaining life or livelihood, such as clean water, food or even money become difficult to procure, individuals in close-knit groups may even coalesce around what is known as “tribal mentality.” They hang on even tighter to each other within the group, sometimes both mentally and physically. Sometimes such groups become “territorial,” not necessarily in a land-bound sense, and they may clash with each other violently, which is perhaps what gives rise to war and suffering. Other individuals or groups may just withdraw into the solace of spiritual pursuits.
So, individuals, communities and sometimes even nations may clash with each other ostensibly over cultural differences which often mask over fundamental strategic contest. Many Southeast Asian countries, for example, see armed conflicts within or even across their borders, as different groups of minorities or even majorities try to advance their political and economic causes in violent fashion. We can perhaps only console ourselves that while such not so civil wars could spill over to neighboring countries, as was the case with the Vietnam War, Most Southeast Asian countries have not gone into full-scale war (although occasional skirmishes did occur) with each other in modern times. Such was, alas, not the case in the Middle East, where wars, both civil and international, have claimed millions of lives.
In the context of a country or state, there are in essence monocultural or multicultural ones. The notion of sovereign “nation states” took root only after World War 1 a century ago. The then US President Woodrow Wilson essentially called for “nation states” to break away from their colonial masters to form independent, sovereign states. At first glance, this sounded like a positive and progressive idea, and indeed it is. But the notion of “nation state” carries with it a certain epistemological burden the effects of which we are still suffering worldwide. For I have the distinct feeling that a “nation” in the Wilsonian sense does not merely convey the meaning of “country” or “state.” Rather, “nation” also carries with it the color of ethnicity or at least culture.
The original Wilsonian idea was perhaps that ethnic groups around the world, many of which resided in their traditional homelands, should become independent countries where their cultures could be practiced without the shackles of the colonizers. This was all fine and noble, and countries around the world derived their independence and sovereignty from this notion of “nation state,” except for the minor inconvenience that not all states consisted primarily of a single ethnic group or culture. When that is the case, as it was with many cases around the world, conflicts may occur whereby the majority and minority groups in newly formed or even established countries do not like each other and would like to dominate the political or economic scene within the countries concerned.
Countries like Japan and Korea may be characterized as non-immigrant countries, where the culture and society in these countries would remain Japanese and Korea, respectively, for a long time to come. Foreigners who choose to reside in these countries would have to essentially assimilate into the local culture or they will find it difficult to prosper. Then there are many Western countries which took in immigrants mainly from the Middle East and Africa. Some countries, like France, appear to prefer these immigrants to assimilate quickly into the French language and culture. Other countries, like the United Kingdom, Australia and, yes, New Zealand, appear to take a more backseat approach as to how these new immigrants accustom themselves in their new countries. In any case, clashes and backlashes have occurred between some of the individuals in the traditionally dominant “national” group and some newcomers who clung on to the traditional ways of their ancestral homeland. And in recent years, this has led to tragic fatalities on both sides.
It is easy to condemn the mass murders as the sick acts of mere individuals. But unless we try to carefully seek out the root socio-economic and politico-cultural causes and address them head-on, we risk seeing these sorts of tragedies recur. There are many multi-cultural Southeast Asian countries that are relatively peaceful in their societal makeup, and perhaps some positive lessons can be derived there for reference as well. We must all learn how to get along.
The post Can’t we all get along? appeared first on The Manila Times Online.