It is a sorrowful fact that the answer to the question “What lives matter?” is that no lives matter. All too often, the solutions to problems are not dialogues that lead to greater understanding, but nuclear options to eradicate the “threats” as defined by an ideology. Instead of being willing to discuss differences, we demonize the differences that define us as unique while demanding our rights to our individuality. This may be white privilege, American privilege, male privilege, it may be what ever the majority privilege in what ever part of the world exists, but we are repeatedly defining ourselves in absolute terms that brook no compromise, which means we are not willing to concede the right of the other to exist.
What we fail to realize is that the will to exist involves the other. It involves relations and interactions with people we don’t agree with. It requires the will to participate in civil society where we can agree to disagree, but we fundamentally respect the right of the other to exist, and even flourish. For the good of society rests in the recognition that no one person or point of view is greater than the whole. Put another way, without each other, we die. For if the measure of belonging is the ability to pass a purity test of what ever ideology, then ultimately, no one can be included in any individual’s ideology. The ultimate logic of individuality is dissolution of society and the destruction of human life.
As I have written elsewhere, my rights are not the gift of a government; they are the result of my humanity. I have the right to freedom of conscience and speech because of my humanity, not because of a government or military. But if I cannot recognize the validity of my fellow humans’ rights to the same freedoms, I give the lie to my own and, in the end, I do not possess these rights that I would deny others. That is the key to understanding the Founding Father’s logic: we all prosper together or we all perish together. Our freedoms only have meaning in the collective for when we deny the other, we deny ourselves.
It may feel good to say that All Lives Matter, but that isn’t true. As long as any state executes a prisoner, all lives do not matter. Any time a military kills in an action, all lives do not matter. Any time an individual kills because of the characteristics of another, all lives do not matter. As long as any person is a target for death because of ideological reasons, no life in the world matters as all lives in the world present differences unacceptable to someone. And that is the problem. Ideologies are evolving to deny the rights of others to exist; to adamantly state that, for the world to be what the ideology claims it must be, those who are different or disagree must die.
We cannot demand the right to be whom we are and deny the rights of others to be whom they are. That contradiction is at the heart of the dissolution of civil society. In the agreement to agree to disagree, we lay the foundation to work towards the good of the whole, inclusive, not of the faction or party, exclusive. The mandate of representative governments is to represent the people, but not to the exclusion of the other. Not to the exclusion of civil society. The character of a nation lies in the recognition and protection of the freedoms and rights of its minorities.
We are a linguistic species; our words matter. The act of speaking is as much a reality as picking up a hammer to build a house. We use our words to build community and civil society, so they have to be inclusive. If our language is divisive and exclusive, we discard parts of ourselves that are critical to the survival of the collective. There is a balance to be struck between the social character of life and the individual rights of each of us. That requires dialogue and acceptance of difference. We discount the other at our own peril. And when no one has to die for us to feel comfortable in our lives, then, perhaps, all lives will matter.