At a Peter, Paul and Mary concert once,
Paul Stookey reflected in his own dry-humor style on the increasing
narcissisim in society as reflected in the titles of magazines in the
United States. “What was the most famous magazine title a
generation ago?” he asks the crowd. “Life!” they shout
back, and Stookey spreads his arms out wide, as big as the world.
“Then we moved from 'Life' to
'People,'” he said,
moving his hands closer together. “Then, from 'People'
we went to 'US,'” he
continued, moving his hands closer together yet. “And then from
'US' to 'SELF
.'” His hands now showed a gap of only a few inches. “I am
waiting for the next magazine title to appear,” he concludes with a
wry smile. “It will be simply entitled 'ME'!
And a few years later a well known TV personality actually came out
with a magazine titled simply the first initial of her own name. And,
more recently the online popularity of “selfies” . . . Need we
say more?
But
what I would like to reflect on here is not narcissism of the
individual personal sort, but of a another kind. Stookey's
tongue-in-cheek observation of our culture came back to mind for me
while reading a conversation with Black philosopher-theologian Cornel
West on the question of nationalism/patriotism.*
And that triggered a thought about who we seem to have become in
large measure, as a nation.
I don't know about you but in my experience it seems that we in the
United States, as a people and a culture, tend to view ourselves as
the best and the brightest in all things, better than anyone else.
In recent years some politicians have made this cultural sense
explicit, affirming directly “U.S. exceptionalism,” something
they claim we have lost in the eyes of the world but that they
promise to regain.
I
suggest that there are several consequences when we look at the world
and ourselves in this way. One consequence is that we tend not to
see the strengths and good in others. If we see ourselves as the very
best, why even recognize what is second or third best. Another
consequence is that we fail to see our own shortcomings and
weaknesses. So, for example, in the days and weeks following 9-11,
the overriding storyline in our media, from our poltical leaders and
among us as citizens, was, in part, puzzlement about why someone
could hate us so much that they would bring this level of violence to
our shores. Bewildered, we would say among ourselves: “We have
done so much good for so much of the world . . . why?” In our
search for some kind of explanation, when the president on whose
watch this attack took place told us that it was because “women in
our society are free, and that such freedom for women was a threat to
'those people,'” somehow many of us believed him, that that
was the cause. That was the explanation.
However during that time – and this came to me mostly in hearing
and reading news from international sources, and from conversations
with my in-laws as well as friends from South America – what I
heard was a more nuanced perspective. Across the world, leaders and
peoples expressed their sadness on our behalf. Many of them were
familiar, first hand in some cases, with the experience of extreme
violence. And so they understood the sorrow and pain, the indignity
of being violated, and they felt with us. However, where they
differed with the main storyline that was being told here in the U.S.
is that they were not puzzled by what had happened. They felt the
pain with us, “but,” they would say, gently, “you really
shouldn't be surprised! The way you have used threat and power to
get your way, no matter what, all around the world – militarily,
politically, economically – this has made you many enemies. You
are not exactly loved by many around the world. You are not
necessarily seen as the bright star that you may imagine yourselves
to be. The image of global bully comes closer to reality. So you
shouldn't be too surprised. We feel for you, but . . . you really
had it coming!”
And this brings me back to the beginning of my reflection. It seems
to me that there is not only a narcissism of the individual, personal
kind but there can also be a national narcissism – a “group-ME”
sort of identity. We are seeing this expressed in the most vitriolic
and unreflective, brutish way in the voices of many of the current
GOP candidates for president and among those who support them.
Watching the opening of the Superbowl recently, I was taken aback by
the display of military decorum and might in the opening ceremony,
including the roaring fly-over of the Blue Angels precisely timed at
the conslusion of the singing of the national anthem. The beginning
of a grand sports event, but contextualized within this “group-ME”
sense of “the best” and “the mightiest,” nested at the deep
core of our national identity.
“Nationalism,”
West argues, “is the dominant form of idolatry” in the modern
world – a statement that should cause pause for any of us who claim
a serious faith commitment. Reflecting from the perspective of
“Black peoplehood” in the formation of the US nation-state,
“every nationalism that I know,” West continues, “has been
patriarchal, class-ridden, homophobic, and usually xenophobic . . .Ӡ
To be honest, I do not understand the
kind of nationalism/patriotism that seems to be so much our U.S.
culture and identity. Especially when the sense of “group-ME”
pits us as against and over against all others. Perhaps it is one of
the blessings of my own multi-cultural upbringing. Growing up at the
intersection of mixed cultural identities, including an adoptive
indigenous brother and afro-Brazilian sister, friends from several
tribal ethnic groups, and living within the richly racially and
ethnically mixed culture which is Brazil, somehow the idea of the
exceptionalism of one nation or of one race or ethnicity didn't occur
to me. This is something which now, in retrospect, I am grateful to
have missed.
Since my early 20s, I have consciously
and intentionally identified more strongly with being a “citizen of
the world” than being the citizen of any particular nation – be
it the one where I was born and have now lived most of my life, or
the one where I grew up. And somehow, as I listen to all the
language and words we use to draw lines, to separate ourselves from
others, to separate this group from that group; as I hear politicans
and fellow citizens supporting (with our tax dollars) the building of
walls, whether on the southern border of the United States, or
between Israel and Palestine, or more recently in the pathway of
refugees seeking asylum in Europe; or city services-based and
racially defined separations between neighborhoods in the towns where
we live and work -- I can't help but wonder!
If I take my faith seriously (and I
would suggest that this is affirmed at the core of all faith and
spiritual traditions), I understand that we are all sisters and
brothers.±
The liturgical affirmation made within the Native American Sweat
Lodge and other rituals states it beautifully: “Metakuye
Oasin.” “All are my
relations.” There is no “other.”
So where I choose to stand is in a
place that challenges the words and powers that seek to divide. To
recognize Metakuye Oasin, all as my sisters and brothers. The
“Group-ME” identity that I choose is to be a citizen of the
world.
_________________________
*Christa
Buschendorf, ed., Cornel West Black Prophetic Fire
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2014), 130-134.
†Ibid.
±As
Pope Francis affirmed recently: "A person who thinks only about
building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is
not Christian. This is not in the gospel."