I was recently in a group of humanity, some form of class, or if you like it, not so peer group apart from common interest, and the issue of intolerance that has bedevilled the world in the 21st century was under discussion. The group consisted of academics, journalists, students, people of theatre, lecturers and humanities from other works of life. I made a submission of my social construct; Overlapping Identities, to foster peace and tolerance.
Overlapping Identity is the intersectionality of our identities as humans which includes identifications within the rings of politics, gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, occupation, alma mater, confraternity and others.
I gave a practical example where I met my childhood friend recently. We both went to school together until we parted at secondary school. We talked heartily, relived old good days and delved into families and political persuasions. We came into a saturation when we discovered our political inclinations were different. We left each other with mutual respect even with that our singular difference, perhaps with some measure of ill-feelings.
I went home thinking in my lucid intervals before the small hours of dawn. Why could we not develop on our mutual identities rather than seperate based on our differences? My mind raced like a bank teller. The thought kept a nagging feeling like the Sisyphean burden on me. I called him over the issue the next day and we laughed over it, discovering we were both Skeptics and Arsenal fans.
I made peace with him and within myself by identifying what united us more than what seperated us. In spite of identities that seperates us as humans, which is natural, we must consciously try to identify those issues that unite us into different groups. If I am a Skeptic, I should know that the Muslim or Christian must have other identities that we must have in common. That undeniable commonality, that intersection, that meeting, that crossing…is what should be important to us, not the differentials, for the purpose of tolerance and peaceful co-existence.
Even if that my childhood friend was not a Skeptic or an Arsenal fan, there were bound to be other overlapping identities that we could have still discovered. Are we not humans of the same gender? Could it not have been possible that we both like kids and relish in their development? A bottle or two of well brewed beer could be a unifying factor, or even the sight of a well endowed female passing and repassing the passage for recognition.
The fanatic, a topic I have written about severally, is one who is incapable of identifying these overlapping identities. He judges based on the differences he has with others and will not have any use for other considerations. He is the cleric reading his Koran by the market place, sipping sweet tea with mint, swearing he will sweep the streets clean of the unclean – the infidels.
He loathes with muderous rage those who do not swear to the rising sun in reverence and hit their heads on the ground at certain hours. The fanatic is the bishop who do not want to be yoked with any unbeliever. He has sworn to his god that the fig tree must be cut down. He scorns those whom he labels sinners, for they shall burn in the lake of fire. Yet, he goes to their market to buy their food, fill his tanks from their stations, buy their beer secretly, fixes his car in their garages, goes to their banks… they even drop their offerings and tithes in his coffers…it does not come to his mind that these are leaves of identities.
No matter how we distance ourselves from these numerous identities and deny their existence, we cannot at least deny we are altogether humans – the greatest of all identities.