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What we believe, how we see the world, for whom
we feel compassion and for whom we feel hatred is
affected in significant ways by how we define who
we are. There are many ways in which we identify
and define ourselves, through our families, through
our tastes and preferences, through our professions,
through our religious affiliations and through the
nations of which we are citizens. From my varied
reading on identity formation and affiliations,
it will come as no surprise to anyone that our religious
and national affiliations have the deepest hold
on us. They so often tend to trump all of the others.
As with all other affiliations, they can embrace
us as well as close us off.
With each of the affiliations come a history that
might stretch back decades, centuries and even millennia.
Somehow all of this history, even if our known ancestors
did not share the same affiliations, becomes extremely
personal. That history is full of events, some to
be celebrated and some to be mourned. Those events
are associated with years and specific dates. The
year is full of dates, dates to remember, dates
we would rather forget and dates we should never
forget. Two of those dates we should never forget
are August 6th and 9th, when sixty-one years ago
the United States dropped the first and up until
now the last atomic bombs to be used in warfare.
On those dates in 1945, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki were destroyed with most of their population.
The historical debate over whether or not these
acts of destruction were necessary to end the second
phase of the world war will continue. While one
could argue whether or not the bombs needed to be
dropped, what cannot be argued about is the massive
death and destruction that resulted from those acts.
How we view these acts, as well as so many others
past and present, depends on how we define who we
are and where we belong.
Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s we lived under
the shadow of an atomic war as the United States
and the Soviet Union built larger and more devastating
arsenals of these weapons. It was the fear and concern
over possible nuclear war, as well as a love of
history, that led me at the age of ten or eleven
to seek out a small volume by John Hersey that described
what happened in Hiroshima in August of 1945.
I remember being terrified upon reading this account,
as well as being devastated that my country, no
matter what the reason, could commit this act of
destruction. As a result, I also remember being
confused. If I was an American, and if it was true
as I was told that everything that the United States
did was fair and just, could it be possible that
this destructive act be right? I heard all the arguments,
I heard all the justifications, but it just did
not seem to sink in and yet my pride of and identification
with my home country made me insist that if we did
it was necessary. I decided to write a letter, and
that letter was to John Hersey, the author of the
book. I had written to him before about another
of his books, and had received a heart-felt response.
This letter was different from the one I had sent
before. Rather than one of appreciation, it came
out of my wanting to believe that the United States
could do no wrong. Out of the belief that my country
could never be wrong, I wrote thanking him for his
account of our nation’s great achievement
– the building and use of this weapon of mass
destruction to bring our enemies to their knees.
It was not long after writing this letter that
I came to regret doing so. I was at first hoping
for a response, but was relieved that one never
came. I came to understand that things were not
as black or white as my younger self seemed to insist.
In the ensuing years I went in the completely opposite
direction, still needing things to be consistent
and certain. I became an anti-nuclear, anti-war
activist, and in that mind set I came to believe
that everything that the United States did was unjust,
even murderous. That same history that I earlier
believed demonstrated the greatness of my home country
now showed that it was guilty of numerous acts of
aggression and exploitation. All I accomplished
doing was to substitute one narrow, hemmed in point
of view for another. Neither was fully true, neither
was completely false. As I came to discover, history
is never really that easy, reminding myself that
it is never so black and white. The history of every
nation, of every people, of every faith is filled
with acts to be praised and accomplishments to be
celebrated, as well as acts to be condemned and
events to be vilified.
Perhaps there is no way to fully escape having
our perceptions, our understandings be impacted,
be influenced by the societies we are raised in
and the religious and philosophical systems in which
we are trained. On many occasions we have seen individual
people change religions, change countries and adopt
new political or philosophical points of view. What
all too often ends up happening is that we just
trade one narrow perspective for another, one prejudice
for another. Our allies become our enemies and our
enemies our allies. Or we get so caught up in our
own original or adopted belief systems that we are
unable to see anyone else’s point of view
or have compassion for them. We get so caught up
that we never see where we might be off track. Examples
can be found of this across the political spectrum
and in all religious and philosophical beliefs.
Less than a year ago I attended a lecture by some
noted speakers discussing the role of spirituality
in politics. In their condemnation of the religious
right, they ended up sounding as self-righteous,
as spiteful, and as accusatory as those they were
criticizing.
My own confusion those many years ago, my own need
to interpret the world in simplistic terms, to reconcile
my understanding of national identity with disturbing
historical events, is experienced by many people
time and time again all over the world. We all have
the potential to see beyond our environment, beyond
our community, beyond our prejudices. To many this
may seem like an unattainable ideal. It is not an
easy task. It takes an ongoing commitment, a commitment
to continually to be open to self-examination, to
be willing to be openly critical of our most cherished
beliefs, of our most basic understandings. It begins
with a commitment to be openly compassionate, openly
understanding, especially to those with whom we
most vigorously disagree. The more comfortable we
get with an opinion, with a point of view (about
ourselves, about others), the more critical and
reflective we must be. I saw a glimmer of this in
one of the speakers at the lecture I mentioned above.
He stopped for a moment, and allowed compassion
to edge out the accusations. Compassion is just
a first step – it starts the process that
allows us to be open to another’s mind and
heart. We must never confuse compassion with weakness
and confusion. It is the first step to strength,
the first step to clarity and confidence.
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