Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung of New Braunfels, Texas April 15, 2023.
In today’s national atmosphere, many forms of illusion ferment that do not square with a shared sense of what is real. In one quarter of the political spectrum, the promise of “retribution” surfaces as a substitute for policy. Its self-serving stance only stokes the appetites of separateness, of us/them more keenly. While retribution falls far short of a responsible policy to improve our nation’s fractured sense of itself, it is nonetheless attractive to illusionists who believe in its benefits.
The illusion of separateness has an enormous appetite. It feeds off victimhood, where the voices of feeling cheated congregate in outrage. It also stuffs itself with a constricted vision that precludes notions that don’t fit into “me,” “mine” and “my,” while conveniently discarding others. For some, colonizing the illusion of separateness allows it to harden into a belief. It transports us well beyond politics to a darker, more sinister region of the nation’s collective heart.
Fixity is one of the impulses that undergirds separateness and retribution. It can override diversity, uncertainty and ambiguity that are part of all our lives; but at what cost? What is sacrificed is a community of shared concerns that is conscious of and embraces those most vulnerable and those on the margins of prosperity. Separateness continues its mischief. It clamps down and holds tight to, “This is what I know.” It is less a truth than a stance against others.
In the stance of retribution, “I am” dominates. In the stance of reconciliation, however, “We are” widens the orbit of understanding and opens a space for forgiveness over forgeries and cooperation over complicity. Within the vessel of reconciliation, individuals and entire cultures can be exposed to what the Greeks called “metanoia,” a change of heart. The heart is the locus of feeling thoughtfully for the other. It incubates solidarity that gathers around a shared concern for the welfare of the many, not the few.
Retribution grows out of the hard soil of our inauthentic sense of who and what we are as a people. We can only truly know ourselves through how we relate to others, for those who are others are indeed us, whether or not we have the heart to recognize and acknowledge them. Further, “getting even” does not aim toward “getting better.” By comparison, “getting even” is uncourageous in its violent design. It promotes isolation while inhibiting the communal imagination’s work of inclusion.
Retribution contains the robust infections of alienation and fragmentation, encouraging an attitude of superiority over inferiority. It offers a false comfort of certainty and fixity. Cemented prejudices, assumptions and fields of value that insist on exclusion fail to assuage a deeper fear of being dethroned.
Seeking retribution is not a political program; it is more primal, and resides closer to the instincts that recoil in fear at the threat of change that is beyond those who seek retribution. It is also a category of value; it cultivates resistance, distrust, and desperation because it fears losing power.
But another “re” word, reconciliation, moves in a constructive direction. It recognizes others as who they are as well as the values, dreams, hopes, insecurities and uncertainties they have — just like the illusionists who champion retribution.
Retribution is a knee-jerk response by those in the restricted business of self-promotion. Reconciliation is an awakened awareness of the values of others, not in competition with, but in a mutual spirit of inclusion.
With its shortfalls, democracy leans into the sacred and mysterious quality and equality of “each” that benefits the “all.” But only if a change of heart recognizes the sacred quality of the other not as a threat but as a nutrient that nourishes the whole.