The bondage of freedom

I have spent most of the summer wading through Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov.  I have discovered that Russian novels - or at least the ones I've read - require a huge amount of patience.  Invariably, the plot is fairly simple, but the numerous diversions, minor characters with confusing names, and the long monologues overflowing with angst that feels slightly hyperbolic make these books the kind of books one feels one ought to read rather than ones one wants to read.  Amid all the social commentary and repressed emotions, however, there are glorious, soaring passages that contain profound truths and keen insight on both God and human nature.   The Brothers Karamazov is no exception, and several passages within have been on my mind recently.  Here's one:

For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but...instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude.  All mankind in our ages have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has from the rest, and he ends up being repelled by others and repelling them...For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges he has won for himself.  Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.  But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another.

Here is where I think America, and to an extent, the modern Western world, has a real problem.  Noble ideas, such as freedom and privacy, are enshrined in our constitutions.  We are taught to cherish the fundamental rights of the individual.  The accumulation of wealth is what defines success.  We tell our children, "You can be whatever you want to be."  We surround our houses with higher walls and more elaborate security systems to protect our hard-earned slice of the American Dream, as if we want to yell simultaneously, "Look at me!" and "Keep out!"

Most significantly, and without wanting to sound like a raging socialist (Note to my English friends: that's a dirty word here in the US.  "Socialist", not "raging".  Raging is entirely acceptable.), capitalism, a system that insists that competition is crucial, has pervaded every aspect of our lives, not merely our economy.  Everyone is a competitor.  Competitiveness is a highly valued trait, so much so that it is instilled in our children at a very young age.  From little league (learning to win) to high school (our obsession with grades), our youngsters are brainwashed in this regard.  We compete with our neighbors, with our siblings, with our co-workers.  We compete passive-aggressively on social media.  We even talk about needing competition between schools - that somehow, establishing new schools in a community will somehow make the failing ones get better (as if they are choosing to fail). 

But a society that emphasizes competition automatically makes half of its participants losers.

That would be fine if we actually took care of those people who lose in the process, but we don't.  They are discarded, apparently lacking that entrepreneurial spirit, unable to work hard enough.  Despite all the noted benefits of failure, it is regarded as something to be ashamed of.  And in a nation where pride is on muscular display in so many places, there is no place for its antithesis, for the freedom to choose our own path and pursue it, even at the expense of others, is our right.  However, according to Dostoevsky, it comes with consequences:

The world says, "You have desires, and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful.  Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires."  And it's no wonder that instead of gaining freedom, they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation....And therefore the the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is...treated with derision.  For what can become of [man] if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself?  He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity?

Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?  Is this what renowned capitalist Adam Smith envisioned?  It is a staggering thought, and it is one that has me stuck.  As Americans, we want privacy and freedom, and to consider the negative consequences of these ideals seems profoundly un-American.  But I have been thinking about this a lot recently, so here we go:

Competition breeds isolation.  And isolation diminishes intimacy.  In the process of living out the very things that we value most, we lose our humanity.  Without having a host of statistics at my fingertips, let me give you a snapshot of my daily life and how isolation features prominently in it, for I suspect my experiences mirror many others'.

I teach almost two hundred students, many of whom shun personal, face-to-face interaction for the comfort of a smartphone screen.  Isolation.

I have students who, frantic with anxiety and fearful of their parents' response, cannot confide in anyone about mental health or identity issues.  Isolation.

I know of at least three students in the recent past who were deemed a danger to themselves and placed in secure facilities.  One took his own life.  Isolation.

Every day, I drive past two senior assisted living homes, which are emblematic of our society's tendency to abandon the elderly and thus abrogate one of the most solemn obligations we have.   Isolation.

I arrive home, waving politely to my neighbors, before disappearing into my house.  Any knock at the door or appearance of someone unfamiliar on my doorstep is immediately viewed with suspicion.  Any future interaction with friends is booked and placed on the calendar weeks in advance.  Isolation.

I discuss with my wife the recent story of a young Canadian Muslim convert who left his home to join ISIS.  How did he get radicalized?  Isolation.

We have not just individuals, but entire communities of African-Americans and Muslims who feel isolated from the country they live in and for whom the narrative of the American dream rings hollow.  This is especially tragic, for this is an isolation that they feel is forced upon them.  There are prisoners who have spent up to 28 years - 28! - in solitary confinement.  Imagine what that kind of isolation can do to one's mind.  Some California prisoners have argued - successfully - that it violates the Eighth Amendment, and prisons are starting to rethink this policy.

The opposite of isolation is intimacy.  And nowhere do these two concepts collide more than in the phenomenon that is social media.  David Brooks, in a remarkable piece in The New York Times, talks about the "illusion of intimacy" that is engendered by social media.  As humans, we long for and, I would argue, are fundamentally designed for intimacy, but we also want freedom.  These two things are essentially mutually exclusive, or at least they are in the way we perceive them.  True intimacy requires us to meet people in the middle, and involves, according to Brooks, "progressive self-disclosure, vulnerability, emotional risk and spontaneous and unpredictable face-to-face conversations."  I think most of us would actually prefer isolation.

Confession: I have often used my natural introversion - the need to be on my own in order to recharge - as an excuse for isolation.  Being used to spending long periods of time on my own - boarding school, travel, battling depression - has inured me to being increasingly private, reserved, and, thus, less than genuine with others.  I have experienced the enslavement caused by isolation, and I fight it every single day with varying amounts of success.

Intimacy also enslaves us, but in the best possible way, for we are no longer free to be selfish and to retreat into our private world, where the things we want no-one to shine a light on are hidden in the darkest recesses of our hearts.  Even times of temporary isolation, for Christians, are done to achieve a greater intimacy with God.  The command for us, when we pray, to "go into [our] room and shut the door" is so that we don't project a public, false intimacy with God before others.

The freedom to do whatever we want is, paradoxically, nothing less than bondage and a rejection of our innate human identity, an identity that can only be fulfilled in pursuing intimacy and embracing it as it ties us closer to our fellow men and women.

Loving our (American) enemies

August 23rd, 2016

What do the following people have in common?

A young man who watches his best friend get raped and not only fails to try to stop the assault but later frames this friend as a thief.

A convicted thief who escapes from prison and then steals valuable objects from a priest.

An aspiring writer who plans and carries out the murder of a moneylender.

The answer will come in a few paragraphs. Meanwhile, the upcoming election has been a regular topic of discussion in our household, and these discussions have often involved our children. Recently, my youngest son (aged 5) said this: 

"I know what we have to do.  We should vote for Hillary and pray for Trump."

I’m not sure where this incredible insight came from, but I haven’t really heard anyone on either side of the political spectrum advocating prayer for either candidate.  It is amazing to think that we are called not merely to pray for but also to love enemies.  In the Christian context, in the safety of a church sermon, or even in the trite advice we give our children, it seems like a noble thing to aspire to, but in an American cultural setting it feels like escapism at best and appeasement at worst.  Our society is not one in which we can afford to love our enemies.  People who love enemies are exploited.  They’re weak.  They are the antithesis of American.

I have been trying to reconcile these two ideas over the last few weeks because I am not sure how an American culture which professes a deep and enduring belief in God or at least in the Judeo-Christian values on which it was founded can run counter to what we are actually called to do as Christians. It seems that the Sermon on the Mount, from which emanate values that many people of all backgrounds, creeds, and persuasions can agree on, is more a series of platitudes, not Beatitudes.   Of course, what makes them so radical is that they are actually incredibly difficult to live by and truly living by them would surely transform our society.  I would argue that is that it is our deeply held belief in the morality of capitalism and the “American Way” that prevents us from being open to loving our enemies.

It seems preposterous, for example, to imagine a society where hate really is considered as bad as murder, or lust the equivalent of adultery.  Loving our enemies?  Is that how the US resolves foreign threats?

Let’s go back to the beginning and our examples.  Here’s a fourth one for you: a man who devotes his life to the hunting down, persecuting, and even the murder of Christians.  

Our individuals are: Amir (from The Kite Runner), Jean Valjean (Les Miserables), Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment), and, finally, a chap named Saul (Acts 9).  What do they have in common?  Each of them experienced powerful redemption that enabled them to atone for their heinous actions and become new people devoted to doing good in the world.

I find it curious that this inability to love our enemies is juxtaposed with the fact that our culture values redemption as one of the strongest, most powerful themes.  When someone is redeemed it gives us hope; it reinforces our belief in the power of grace.  A moment of true redemption is the poignant, lump in the throat, transcendent change that moves us perhaps more than any other.

We had a guest speaker in church on Sunday, and he preached on Acts 9.  Saul, who, of course, changed his name to Paul, experienced one of the most profound redemptions of all time and became almost instantly the greatest proponent of the very religion he had hoped to stamp out.  In that story, argued the speaker, we learn that loving our enemies is essential because we never know who will be saved or who will be redeemed.  If Paul conversion is possible, isn’t anyone's?  And most importantly, there was Ananias, called by God in a vision to go to and minister to this man who was a known enemy.  

We love a good redemption story, but let us remember that we are, like Ananias, called to be the people that make that redemption possible by giving others a chance to be redeemed.  And in this modern day, that is not easy, for our culture teaches us that justice is more important than redemption, and that retribution is more important than forgiveness.  If those statements sound wrong let us apply them to our own lives and situations in which we have been the victims. We long for justice.  We long for our enemies to be laid low.  We oppose voting rights for those who have served their time in jail.  We oppose education for those in jail.  We are more interested in keeping criminals locked up than in actually rehabilitating them.  We are skeptical when murderers find Jesus in prison.  They don’t deserve it.  It’s unfair.  They broke the law.  They need to be held accountable.

I provided examples from literature, for I found it difficult to find many real life examples. They seem a lot harder to come by.  This had me tempted to rail, again, against our disingenuous society and our own hypocrisy, but I realised that I need look no further than myself to find an example of redemption.  I have received forgiveness at moments when I least deserved it.  I have received grace without asking for it or even knowing it at the time.  And I think that if we are honest, each of us either needs redemption or has been redeemed.   Each of us has been an enemy who has been loved.

Every time I wrestle with issues like this, realizing that I am broken and morally inept helps me turn the problem on its head.  

It’s not about Hillary or Trump.  It’s about me.

Is this the world you want?

August 22nd, 2016

Switchfoot’s album Fading West has been the soundtrack of our family’s summer. Its soaring anthems and meaningful lyrics made it the perfect accompaniment on our recent road trip through California, Oregon, and Washington. I have heard it emanating from my children's bedrooms, and I have found myself humming its melodies on numerous occasions.

One of my favorite songs on the album contains these lines:

Is this the world you want?

You're making it, everyday you're alive.

It’s a pretty powerful rebuttal to those of us who are dissatisfied and angry.  The idea that each of us, in tiny, miniscule ways, is daily contributing to the world in which we live is both sobering and empowering.   I thought about this in the context of the upcoming election.  When we complain about the landscape and atmosphere in this country leading up to the November general election, we are perhaps being disingenuous, for we are the landscape and atmosphere. When we complain about those in government, we forget that we participated in the process that elected them in the first place.   

The song goes on, “You start to look like what you believe,” and I think that can apply to our political situation, too.  We are worried about extremism and we descry the vitriol spewing from both sides of the political divide.  Yet, again, I think we are being dishonest with ourselves.  It seems to me that politicians are merely a reflection of who we are.  Politicians, it would appear, respond to people, especially the people who are most likely to vote for them. The most successful, for better or for worse, are able to tap deep into those people’s frustrations and reflect their anger back to them, creating a cycle of reciprocity in which each party - voter and politician - simply reflects the same feelings back and forth in an increasingly emotional manner.  Voters feel emotionally validated and politicians feel they have made a connection.

I find it rather ironic that we wonder why our country is so divided since we continually elect people who would seek to divide rather than unite. How do we have the gall to call for unity when we regularly elect people who prey on division?  Ultimately, we get the leaders we deserve, for they take their lead from us.  And just a quick glance at our desperate desires to grab our gated, picket-fenced, armed and alarmed slice of the American Dream reveals that these divisions are not only of our own making but of our own volition.

I recently read Julian Barnes’ excellent novel Arthur and George, about the lives of the author Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes; and George Edalji, the son of Indian immigrants, who is falsely accused of a crime. In the story it becomes clear that institutional racism in the police force, the community, and the judiciary is a strong motive behind Edalji’s suspicion, arrest, and eventual conviction for a crime he did not commit. What fascinated me by the story, was George's insistence that, despite his appalling treatment, the society in which he lived (late 19th Century Britain) was not racist and that people did not in fact see him differently.  George believed in a society that didn’t yet exist, but it would eventually.  This gives me hope, for, mistaken and naive as George is in the novel, it reminds me that our institutions are the very last things to change.

Why does this give me hope? Well, if our institutions - government, the police, even the church - are the last things to change, then is logical that we should be the first ones to change. It tells me that the job of changing the world has been placed firmly in our hands, not the hands of our politicians and other leaders.

The song’s chorus then goes even further:

You change the world, every day you’re alive.

My daughter says that this song makes her both happy and sad and I can see why.  When Switchfoot ask us if this is the world we want, the implication is that not only do our actions determine the world in which we live but they also change the world in which others live.  The way we drive our cars, our interactions with strangers, our carbon footprint, the values we instill in our children, all of these things are changing the world for all of us.  We don’t need a Delorean or a time machine to change the future: we’re doing it already - for ourselves and others.

So the next time we complain about society maybe we should be asking ourselves what we are doing to change it, and reflecting on what have we already done to change it.

If we take Switchfoot’s maxim as essentially true, Gandhi's famous quote about us being the change we want to see in the world is, then, somewhat misleading, for we are already changing the world.  When you think that every action you take has the ability to change your life and someone else's life, then it is perhaps not too much of a stretch to believe that we are making the world that we want and if we don't like it we have no one to blame but ourselves.

America needs to start losing again

July 29th, 2016

We will be on holiday when our youngest son’s fall soccer season starts on August 3rd.  Think about that for a minute.  Fall season.  August 3rd.

I haven’t heard from my oldest son’s coach yet, but I suspect that the first day of practice will be on some other obscenely early date.  And so will begin another round of Southern California youth sports that will see us shuttling back and forth in the minivan, awkward moments trying to put up the sunshade in 80 degree heat on a Saturday morning, a thorough vetting of post-game snacks, and the usual collection of parents and coaches who truly, honestly, don’t care about winning - at least not until the first close game of the season.

My children have been fortunate.  In 16 seasons (by my calculations) of youth recreational sports, they have been, on the whole, well coached by well-meaning adults who made teaching skill development and life lessons a priority over racking up victories.  Most of the parents we’ve come into contact with have been enthusiastically supportive and pleasant.  Yet every season we see sports bring out the worst behaviour in adults who would consider themselves good people, and I think that much of it has to do with the thrill and stress of competition, which they feel vicariously through their children, as well as being with and opposed to others who are experiencing the same thing at the same time.  I don’t need to go into details; we have all read about or seen for ourselves examples of this.  Good people doing bad things.

Confession: While I have never criticized my child in public or physically assaulted an official, I have certainly been that coach and have been tempted to be that parent, finding myself thinking and saying things in the heat of the moment.  I am certainly as guilty as anyone of this, and I am ashamed of some of my past behaviour.  My kids’ games provide me with ample opportunity to show the grace and self-control I frequently lack.

William Golding, the British author, claimed that all humans have the capacity for evil and that our society’s rules and conditioning provide us with the order necessary to resist the urge to do whatever we feel like doing.  Golding claims (most famously in his novel, Lord of the Flies, which is about a group of British boys stranded on an island) that this civilized behaviour is a mere veneer and that two things - fear and chaos - remove those inhibitions and enable us to give in to more primal, visceral urges.  Other social scientists have spoken of the thresholds we reach at which we succumb to the pressure for us to do things (such as berate an official or even our own child) that we know are wrong.

Now, I am not suggesting that Lord of the Flies is a perfect analogy for youth sports, its sidelines and dugouts (although I can certainly see some similarities), but seeing the transformation of placid parents and jovial coaches into bug-eyed, screaming agents of wrath tells me that competition, specifically the desire to win (or the fear of losing), brings out the worst in us.  In the fear of failure and amid the chaos of competition and thinking that victory will bring us what we want, we often give in to a primeval desire to win.  Whatever the cost.

Fear and chaos.  Two things that have typified much of this political season which has certainly brought out the worst in people, not least on social media.  And into that heady mix has come, as if we were in a gym or on a baseball field, the refrain, “America needs to start winning again.”  Donald Trump has said it.  Mike Pence, his running mate, has said it.  Of course, elections are about winning and losing, but how or when does a country win?  War?  Obviously, but I hope we will do all we can to stay out of it.  Trade?  I hope not.  In an interconnected, globalized economy, countries can hardly afford to be competitive at the expense of being cooperative.  In making more money?  Is that our goal as human beings and as Americans?  More to the point, when America wins, who loses? At what cost?  And do we even care?  But for every winner there is a loser.  For every celebratory dog-pile, there is a dejected dugout.  

As a coach of several teams that lost many more games than they won, I am very familiar with the view from the loser’s bench.  We once started an 18-game season 0-13.  Much of the time, despite all my positive thinking and hearty encouragement, I knew we would lose and lose heavily.  A desperate desire to win was abandoned pretty quickly.  So when the focus on winning was taken away, what could I as a coach focus on?  Teamwork.  Perseverance.  Sportsmanship.  Responsibility.  Character.  Love of the game.  In short, all the things that we claim we want our kids to learn through sport.  In fact, I would argue that what we learn in seemingly perpetual defeat is far more important that what we experience in victory.  Paul tells us in Romans 5 that we should actually glory in our sufferings, for they ultimately produce hope.  It is far easier to be magnanimous in victory when you know what the other team is experiencing in defeat.  Winning can be euphoric, to be sure, but it also engenders hubris.  Even as a teacher, I try to emphasize to my students and their parents that they need to learn how to fail.  Losing and failure teach us so much about ourselves, give us essential tools, and help us develop key character traits.  Why, then, are we so obsessed with winning?

It simply isn’t in our culture to even accept failure, let alone to actively seek it.  Can you imagine a parent proudly posting photos of her child’s devastation in losing a soccer game?  A NFL coach excited that his team had lost again?  A presidential candidate saying passionately that “America needs to start losing again”?  But I think we need to hear statements like these.  Even our politicians’ best moments seem to come at times of loss and grief - witness Presidents Bush and Obama during the Baton Rouge slain police officers’ memorial service.

What would it be like to live in a country that lost and embraced losing as a badge of honor?  
What would it be like to be part of a church in a society that frankly acknowledged its brokenness?  What would it be like to have politicians remind us of their own failures instead of their opponents’?
What would it be like to live a life that saw losing as the only way to success?

It would be harder, for sure.  Maybe the America we know and love would no longer exist.  But that doesn’t mean that our lives would be worse.  And I am convinced that it would be far, far easier to embrace civil discourse and unity and extend grace to those whom we feel are deserving of condemnation if we were to find common ground in our failures and brokenness.  For broken and failed we surely are.

The truly liberating thing about this is that as Christians, this approach to winning and losing forces us to acknowledge that there is only one victory that really matters, and it happened on a hill in Palestine 2,000 years ago.  In that light, what do life’s defeats matter when the ultimate victory is already won?

So after my son’s team’s first loss, I will be sure to listen carefully to our coach, the players, the parents, and my own heart.  And maybe, just maybe, in the car on the way home, I will say to him, “You know what?  I’m glad you lost.”

A civil state of mind

July 25th, 2016

Teenagers love to talk.  Parents of teenagers may raise a skeptical eyebrow at this statement, but when the opportunity comes for my students to talk, they usually snatch it with both hands, if only for the reason that they aren’t being forced to write an essay.  Since the inception of Common Core, there has been a huge movement towards more listening and speaking in class.  This goes by different names, but many of us use the term “academic conversations”.  

Now this is not merely a case of putting students in groups and directing them to talk to each other.  Without proper guidance, within seconds, they will most likely have got off topic and started interrupting each other.  Some will not be listening properly; others may not even be speaking at all.  Another problem can be a major imbalance among students when it comes to participation in these discussions.  Without strict rules, conversations will be dominated by a select few (usually the most confident and most opinionated), and many students will feel that they are unable to express their ideas.    

The point is that students need to be trained to have productive academic conversations.  Teachers need to give them the language and establish the parameters for using that language.  Civil language, if you like.  And this can only be achieved by creating a classroom culture of respect and safety.  

Yet even as I try to foster this among my students, I am very aware that we adults, especially in recent months, seem unable to do this.  Anyone who has had their discussion thread hijacked by someone who either didn't read properly or who merely has an axe to grind, and anyone who has - mentally or physically - face-palmed out of frustration at seeing yet another opinionated post from a family member will know what I am talking about.  

Living in our social media echo chambers, we are increasingly exposed to precisely the kind of disrespectful and blinkered verbosity - the kind that makes the most noise and seeks to garner the most attention - that as a teacher I would not tolerate from my students.  Why, then, do I tolerate and even secretly (heck, even openly sometimes) enjoy it in my life?  

Of course, much of this has to do with the dynamics of social media, which gives us the freedom to say whatever we want without needing to wait around for a response, but I feel that a lot of it is a condition of the heart, and the reality is that we usually just don’t pay attention to what others have to say.

One of the things I tell my students at the start of each classroom discussion is that instead of trying to be interesting, they should try to be interested.  And that is at the heart of the Civil Language Project.  When we are genuinely interested in what others have to say, our horizons are broadened and we open ourselves to new and different perspectives.  

In short: when we are interested, we learn.  

Young people get a bad rap these days, but most of the teenagers I come into contact with are eager to learn.  Few adults seem to be, and it’s evident at every level of our society, from the struggling marriage to the electorate who don’t reflect on history.

A confession: I am one of those adults.  Trying to show myself as interesting - no, fascinating - to others is one of my many weaknesses.  I like to think that I have a lot of interesting things to say and I love it when people are listening to me.  But, as my wife well knows, I am not very good at reciprocating that attentiveness and listening to others.  

So, fully aware of the irony and hypocrisy inherent both in my admission and in writing a blog, I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where we showed genuine interest in others’ ideas.  Matthew 12 tells us that “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”.  Civil language, therefore, must come from a civil state of mind.

On the last day of the 2015-2016 school year, I invited two college professors to sit in on and participate in my 10th grade class’s final Socratic seminar.  At the end of over an hour of generally respectful and stimulating discussion of the year’s literature, I asked my guests to share with the class what they most want to see in their own students.  What they said stunned me.  One said “openness” and the other said “humility”.  

Openness and humility.

It makes perfect sense.  A student who comes to class with an open mind and the knowledge that his knowledge is incomplete is ready to succeed in all aspects of the class, particularly in class discussion, and I think the same can be said of our attempts to introduce more civil discourse into our spheres of influence.  Having successful, meaningful, and - most importantly - consensus-building conversations with our friends, family members, and co-workers requires us to shed all notions of superiority and to listen with humble hearts and open minds.  

If we expect it of our students and young people, we should surely expect it of ourselves.  Where can you show openness and humility in your future interactions with others?

What Romeo and Juliet can teach us about how to find common ground

Spring means one thing for my 9th grade English classes: Romeo and Juliet.   For the past few years, I have required my students to memorize the 14-line Prologue. I assign this, not because of a perceived innate desire to scar and traumatize my students, but because I believe that working with Shakespearean English is the best way to remove my students’ barriers to understanding it.  Language, of course, is astonishingly powerful.  One does not need to read Mark Antony’s famous eulogy in Julius Caesar (a rite of passage for my 10th graders, by the way) to see that words and the way they are crafted and grouped can antagonize or inspire, infuriate or disarm.  More on that later.

The famous opening to Romeo and Juliet introduces us to the warring parties (“two households”) and the setting (“fair Verona”), and for years, I have seen the notion of two families’ intractable feuding as a mere backdrop against which the play’s main action - the tragic story of the “star-cross’d lovers” - can take place.  This is, after all, a love story, a cautionary tale for adults and teens alike of what can happen when you fall in love with the wrong person.  The fighting of the Montague and Capulet families is - at first glance - necessary only because we need some kind of insurmountable obstacle to stand in the way of the lovers’ happiness and thus make “the fearful passage of their death-marked love” futile yet compelling.

But as I consider recent events in Dallas, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge (not to mention Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York), as well as the sound bites from the current political season, the more I have come to realise that the play’s tragedy actually lies in the society torn asunder by hatred.  The Prologue mentions Verona as a place “where civil blood makes civil hands unclean”.  We are so caught up in the “misadventured piteous overthrows” of two teenagers that we overlook Verona’s poisonous climate in which every word and every encounter threaten violence.

Fast forward 400 years and we find ourselves in a similar position.  Rhetoric, violence, accusation, and recrimination swirl in ever-quickening cycles.  Our voracity for some form of revenge (I was going to use “justice”, but if we really thought about it, I doubt any of us would want justice dispensed fairly) seems to be matched only by our voracity for validating our own worldviews and opinions with the posting of increasingly hysterical and polarizing invectives on social media.  “Here’s much to do with hate,” muses Romeo later in Act I, “but more with love.”

How much do we really want peace when we are so keen to embrace and spread vitriol?

How much do we want unity when we are content to close ranks and interact merely with those who agree with us?

I read an excellent piece recently about our complete lack of willingness to consider and listen to other viewpoints.  A quick look at my carefully curated news stream and Facebook feed would support this theory.  As a friend recently posted (and I’m paraphrasing here): when was the last time you read something you disagreed with?  Or perhaps more pertinent would be the question: when was the last time you didn’t read something because you knew you’d disagree with it?

Merely reading something, though, is the easy part.  We don’t have to really engage intellectually with an argument from a news source from which we have radically different world views.  While there is something to be gained from considering the other side of the argument, I would like to suggest something more radical.  

Consider the person and not the argument.

Towards the end of Act One, Romeo, a Montague, finds himself at a Capulet party.  It is, of course, when he meets Juliet, but it is equally significant (now that I am looking at the play in this new light) for the reaction of Capulet to his presence.  When informed by his outraged nephew Tybalt that a Montague has crashed the party, Capulet merely says, “Let him alone, gentle coz.”  It would seem that Romeo’s mere presence is enough to temper Capulet’s hatred of his enemy to the extent that he allows him to stay at his party (although he may have acted differently had he known that Romeo at that moment was falling in love with his daughter!).  In that moment, Capulet is forced to concede that Romeo is by reputation a popular and polite young man.  Of course, Capulet has many selfish reasons for doing this, but the point is this: presence diffuses anger.

It is far easier to mouth off about illegal immigration on Facebook than it is to say those very same words to the undocumented worker landscaping your yard.  At least, I hope it is for you.  In the moment of meeting someone, our shared humanity creates a commonality that, thanks to our social mores, is very difficult to ignore.  We have, unfortunately, become inured to the ease with which we can add our voice to social media; we get all of the benefits of speaking with none of the consequences.  But consequences there are, and we have reaped them in all their ugliness.

The Civil Language Project, the brainchild of Dave Bruno, seeks to promote unity in a fractured society.  It resolves to promote confession over accusation, to eschew reductionism and division, and to use language that invites calm, measured, and rational conversation, and interactions that produce unity.  How do we do this?

Well, the final scene of Romeo and Juliet gives us a suggestion.  Standing amid the bodies of his daughter, nephew, son-in-law, and hoped-to-be-son-in-law (it’s a long story), Capulet, arguably the chief architect of the misery that has unfolded, turns to his rival and says, “O brother Montague, give me thy hand.”  And, just like that, the feud is over.  Of course, this is Shakespeare’s way of rapidly concluding the play before the grief of the lovers’ needless deaths has dissipated, but there is a lesson to be learned, nonetheless.

Just like the fight between the Montagues and the Capulets, I get the sense that it has taken a series of tragic and senseless deaths and a political season like no other to force us to recognize our own brokenness and fraudulent self-righteousness.  I am encouraged by what I have seen from some brave people on both sides of the police violence debate (not so much in the Republican and Democratic National conventions).  For when we turn to someone and say, “O brother, give me thy hand” (the old English is not required, but it does sound good), we are immediately - literally - unified.  It diffuses tension and establishes a mutual respect that is essential for any future dialogue.  

[Admittedly, it might be awkward to say this in a comments thread on Facebook, but we can say words to that effect; therein lies the problem of social media.  Rarely can interaction on its many platforms be a legitimate substitute for face to face meeting, but starting here is better than not starting at all.]

We cannot list our grievances and deliver our defense and then come together.  We must come together first.  No negotiations, no pretensions, no conditions.  Just a recognition of our collective failures and moral bankruptcy.  Then we can talk.  Then we can discuss.  Only after we have shared common ground literally can we seek it figuratively.

The word “civil” can be used several ways.  Civil war.  Civil rights.  Civil behaviour.  Shakespeare recognized this in the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet.  Maybe our society is not going the way of Verona, but sometimes it certainly feels like it.  Plenty of civil blood has already stained our civil hands, and we are all to blame.

Ultimately, Romeo and Juliet may well be a play about love, but it also provides us with insight into the pain a fractured society can cause and the simple steps we can take to start the process of fixing it.  The discussions we have (online and in person) in the coming weeks and months will, I am sure, provide us with ample opportunities to do so.

Please check out the Civil Language Project and consider participating.