Get personal, please!

Ayatollah Khomeini once said something to the effect that he didn’t disagree with Western people, he only disagreed with their governments. Considering what he did to his own people I have to question the sincerity of his statement, but that doesn’t detract from the statement itself.

In effect, what he said was that he disagreed with the political ideologies of the West, but not necessarily with the people subscribing to them. I believe that to be a truly grand and wise thing to say. It is an acceptance of the fact that ideas drive human beings, yet a refusal to reduce human beings to ideas.

Time and time again I have found myself reacting strongly to certain predominant views - political, social, religious, or otherwise. Fact is, however, that I have rarely found any reason for reacting strongly when confronted with individuals who pledged allegiance to those views. The complexity of the human condition has almost always baffled my resistance, and left me wondering why I couldn’t just keep my moral high ground, and leave it at that.

At first I thought I must be a coward shy of conflict, but then it dawned on me: what if there aren’t any true one-on-one representatives of ideologies? After all, ideologies are such stuff as dreams are made of. It’s even in the word itself – idea, ideal. And how could any human being possibly liken itself to that?

As it turned out, the people I was crusading against didn’t exist. Never had, never would. They were mirages caused by my need to justify and realize my beliefs, views, opinions. But why did I at all need to justify them like that? Why couldn’t I just hold them without trying to manifest them or their antitheses in the world around me? Then we might actually get down to do some talking, face to face and no propaganda.

I’m not proposing we give up on ideals. I’m only saying that we cannot allow ourselves to believe in their objective existence – not in this world, anyway. My conclusion relates heavily to the way we argue, the way we critisize others and defend ourselves, in the on-going debate about human values and human lives. Nobody can be likened to an idea. Aspire, yes, but never likened.

Attempts at objectivism that forget that all objectivity contains an element of subjectivity (there’s always somebody behind the camera), aren’t the stuff that dreams are made of, but rather the stuff that prejudices are made of. Without getting biblical, Jesus said that he who is without sin should throw the first stone. Perhaps we should think about that – or something similar – the next time we try to set ourselves or others on the same footing as an ideology.

I’m fully aware that big operations like politics and war can’t afford to take into account every single human being when making decisions, but I do believe that we, the individuals, can. We don’t have to form opinions about people we’ve never met. We don’t have to praise or condemn actions for which we don’t even know the motive. We don’t need to align ourselves with abstract ideologies to have an identity. We are human beings in and of ourselves, and we shouldn’t violate that by subscribing to prejudiced and dehumanized views of the world.

I’m not trying to save anybody in the name of anything but themselves. That’s why I’m reading blogs, that’s why I’m craving for the latest story of this morning’s trip to the bakery. So that I can begin to see people as something else than victims or warriors or blown to bits bodies. So that I can begin to know them.

You acknowledge and welcome this process every time you make a personal entry in your blog. Whether you like or not, this is the way things are going. And I, for one, am in for the ride.