Carefully Taught

‘You’ve got to be carefully taught…’ goes the refrain from a song in the Broadway musical South Pacific. The man singing is the young lieutenant from the USA, who has fallen in love with a young Polynesian woman, and is beginning to hear from others that he’s making a mistake, that it’s not ‘right’ or ‘natural’ and so forth: that a Caucasian man and a Polynesian woman should not fall in love due to their different skin tones. The song addresses racism head on, and makes no bones about the fact that racism, along with all other prejudices, are taught. These are not ‘natural’ ideas floating around our subconscious, waiting to be triggered by some event that makes us suddenly and irrevocably discriminatory. When left to their own devices, small children will play with other small children, delighting in their company, and not noticing their gender, their race, their language, or any other differentiating feature. They are simply small children, playing games together, making up stories, and pretending, using what is available—sometimes only their imaginations—to imitate what they have seen, and by so doing, begin to learn social behavior. They learn how to get along, how not to get along, and so many other things. But, again, left to themselves, the prejudices that may appear later in their lives, do not have a part of this time.

The lyric above is absolutely correct: people need to be taught to hate and discriminate. Love, and the pleasure it brings is the human default. Conversely, fear is the root of hatred and prejudice, though that’s not often acknowledged by most of us. And yes, we all have fears that lead us to irrational thoughts, some more benign and some more nefarious than others, about other people, other countries, other religions, and anything that drives wedges between the potential friendship and collaboration of two entities, be they humans, states, or political parties. When that happens, a door closes, and the knowledge and learning that might have been gained by both is sacrificed. Yes, some people are scary. We may completely disagree with someone about evolution, or religious belief, but when these walls go up and we dismiss the other person and their convictions, all learning ceases, and our ‘beliefs’ become hardened, atrophied, and begin to lose their merit. While we may have been on the right track, by closing off civil discourse, we have chosen to limit what we hear, learn, and ultimately understand. And all as if there is one true belief system, eclipsing all others in its knowledge and scope. It is reassuring to think there is one true belief system, and as humans, we seek comfort and consistency. But as someone who delights in the diversity that surrounds me, in my little corner of the world, I cannot imagine a world and a universe as profoundly varied as the one we inhabit could or would exist without a multiplicity of differences, challenging us to get to know and understand what is different from us. Curiosity is one of the greatest of human virtues, and from it springs intelligence. Not necessarily ‘intelligence’ as in ‘he’s an intelligent man,’ but the sort of natural intelligence that leads a person to continually seek new knowledge and new understanding of the world around them.

Believing in something, be it love, or hope, or even more man-made creations like organized religion or government, gives us a platform from which we can face the world and what it presents. And like an actual platform, or base, on which a house or bridge is built, our platforms support us, and give us a basis of facing the challenges life gives us. This begs the question, though, of whether or not our individual platform, base, or foundation allows us to be flexible, to question ourselves, to question those around us, and to discern if we are operating from a place of love or of fear. Love will give us the world; hate and fear will take it away, perhaps forever.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

                    —Martin Luther King, Jr.