As one watches, with either the tickle of bemusement or the wretchedness of trauma, the actions of societies as they seek to maintain the sovereignty and safety of their citizens on a planet of ruthless competition, which occasionally resolves into watchful collaboration, one is repeatedly reminded of our recurring need for enemies to resist, battle and vanquish. Whether it’s the villainous orcs or the rotations of ‘bad actors’ like Assad, Putin, Milosevic or Netanyahu; Al Qaeda, Taliban or Isis, with this season’s virus mutation, climate deniers or alarmists, extreme weathers or toxic ideologies, there’s always some alien invader storming the gates and decimating innocents. And now, with the Pentagon’s permission, the spectre of actual alien invaders has raised its mysterious head again as threat assessments vie with welcoming open arms for dominance.
The enemy from beyond the perimeter, however defined, is the eternal ‘other’ from over there, the stranger about to strangle, – destroy, absorb or command – the force to be resisted if safety and independence is to be valued and preserved. Throughout the kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral, such experience is endlessly replicated, and as sentient beings employing all our vehicles of analysis and expression we have absorbed this archetypal behaviour pattern for as long as human incarnation has been a determining factor on this planet.
And it’s no great leap to see the programming of primitive humans as a small step from their animal cousins. But as we evolve in the subtleties and complexities of emotional and mental life which unfold as the necessities of food, safety and shelter are taken care of, we should begin to shrug off the imperatives of the lower drives that dictate those opposing teams of friend and foe so beloved of political, religious and economic life.
Obviously it’s an appallingly slow process, and the institutionalized nature of the above structures, with their inbuilt agendas and mandates, ensure the snail’s pace we have become accustomed to. Religions enshrine the illusion of good and bad, sacred and profane, economics enshrine the illusion of winner and loser, politics enshrine the illusion of competing systems. And just as efficiently life on this plane enshrines the illusion of separation and mortality.
As we expand, in maturity and experience, to embrace the understanding that all opposing viewpoints are mere positions on a compass, illuminating various paths, all of which can be adopted and then followed to that elevated destination from which they can all be seen, snaking their way through the valley below towards that point of retrospect upon which all travelers eventually stand, we can see these dualisms as hurdles to be overcome, preferably by sidestepping. Once there we can know that all opposites actually attract and seek to entice those who can be induced to dance with their much feared partners, dance to the music that life unleashes anytime the harmonies and rhythms are felt above the din our frantic activities deliver.
Of course those of us who are now able to drop the need for enemies into that trash recycle bin still have to cope with the millions who are yet living out the remainder of their subscription, cozying up to that ancient tribal identification rather than melting in the pot of nations united in diversity. As we feel the tides of their opinions wash over us more or less constantly, we know that we are rocks in the waters of resistance, rocks who submit rather than rebel. Submission we know as the practice which ushers you toward that portal, whose opening leads only to more and more opening, until everything ‘other’ passes through you, leaving little or no trace. And ultimately no you to fend off anything.
