On Individuality, Love, and Race

I grew up in the Jehovah’s Witnesses until I was eight, it was a significantly black congregation in an almost exclusively white town. After worship, we would often go to a black family’s house for a giant meal and fellowship. This was my normal. We segregated ourselves as Witnesses. We called each other Brother and Sister. My best friend was the only black kid in the class, we were the only Witnesses I knew of in elementary school.

We were rising poor, living in the farmland outside town, my dad was doing well as a guitar teacher and performer when my grandfather died and saddled us with debt and a house we had to move in to. That area was more wealthy and had better schools. He continued to work his butt off and provide a safe and loving home for us, with my mom home, loving on us full time. My friend, Brandon, lived in, to my country eyes, an impossibly crowded apartment building with his grandmother. We never talked about his parents. We were outsiders in school, we knew that: Witnesses whose caretakers dressed them as close to Middle Class standards as they could manage. He had a video game system and I had the luxury of open spaces around me, I figured we each had our little pieces of the good life.

Then we left the congregation. For years I had been pelting my dad with theological questions. He’s a smart rebel, he answered and encouraged my questions. Nothing was off limits, each question deserved thoughtful consideration, no matter how deeply it may undercut doctrine. And undercut they did. Once the dust settled, he would credit my questions for speeding our exit from that insular tribe.

I think I knew the next gut punch was coming, “Brandon won’t be your friend anymore. He won’t be allowed to talk to you. It’s not his fault. His grandmother and the Brothers and Sisters will insist on it. Don’t be angry with him. This will hurt him too. This is part of the reason we’re leaving, this is wrong.” It wasn’t really a surprise, I knew the rules. I don’t think I cried then, but right now, in the midst of this tribal bullshit, it breaks my heart anew. I’m crying over that loss for the first time. Worse than that, I feel a wellspring of hate that I have buried over years of trying to do right and live in love. You can’t bury a spring. The water will saturate the ground, seep into your life.

Hate can only last for as long as you don’t look at it. I hated the Witnesses for taking away someone I loved. I hated organized religion in general for the divides it built between people. Since becoming a father, I’ve had more love in my life each day. It has held back these old hates at times, but eventually they must be faced. Since becoming a widower, I’ve seen the transformational power of love and focused my life on understanding my anger, forgiving myself for it, and moving forward in love.

I no longer hate the Witnesses or organized religion. I have discovered God’s love in all Creation, including the horrors and tragedies. Jesus said to love your enemies, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. moved my heart when he specified to love the oppressor.

My bias remains against tribal institutions. I value the individual above any group. That is not to say that groups do not have value, but experience has taught me that evil has an easier time rising in groups than good.

I talked to my son about “mob mentality” and how I’ve witnessed it and participated in it. I explained, in fewer words than here, how I protect myself from it. The nervous system is not controlled in whole by one’s brain, each nerve ending can react through reflexes and muscle memory. In this way, our entire body is our brain. At different times we focus thinking power in one or more places. Much of the body functions independent of concious thought. This is not simply a matter of voluntary and involuntary systems as we were taught in health class. We can take control over every function of the body to varying degrees. We can also cede control to automatic responses or an external “brain.” This is what happens in a mob. It can seem as harmless as dress, everyone in black t-shirts at a metal concert. It can manifest in a chant, “U! S! A!” or “I can’t breathe!” These are steps toward surrendering control of one’s mind to a group. Once we all look and sound alike, we can move alike. Fists in the air, stomping to a beat, or marching…we’ve relinquished yet more of our mind, our soul, our individuality. The tipping point is a mystery to me, where does this become dangerous? I choose to activate my individuality at as many stages as possible. I am highly social, I love being around people, so I am often in situations that encourage hive mind over individual thought.

It may seem contradictory, but I learned this as a child raised with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We were not to worship anything but God and the Pledge of Allegiance was against that principle. I was taught to respectfully stand while the class recited the words of the Pledge, but to not participate further. The Witnesses were promoters of group think; however, they taught me how to exist within a group, yet stay separate from the group.

It was decades before I read the same message from Jesus. In Jesus I found a way to love that individualistic part of myself and express it as love toward others.

Yesterday I put on an absurd outfit, almost without thinking (I wish I had taken a picture). There are so many demands to “Say this,” “Don’t say that,” “Go to this rally,” “Don’t go to this rally,” “Wear this,” “Don’t wear that.” I put on blue soccer shorts for a small group training later in the day, a torn and orange Hawaiian shirt because it was beautiful out and we were visiting a world class garden, and a red What Would Joan Jett Do? t-shirt because, well, I need headbanging in my life. An eclectic outfit for an eclectic life. No fear that I would end up with my mind lost to a crowd, a first defense of sorts.

Mob mentality, hive mind, and group think are the easy ways we slide into tribalism. It’s how we move from the higher level thinking of the muscle in our heads to the rote mimickery of our bodies.

I keep trying to push into the specific tribalism of race, but I don’t know how to get there. My own bias against all tribalism is significant in my rejection of the idea of race. My upbringing in a tribe that was based on doctrine was infused with the concept that a human’s soul was everything and his skin color nothing. I experienced otherism before racism. Racism struck me as a crude and ignorant subset of otherism. It still doesn’t make sense to me. Race is a social construction. If we accept it as more than that, we are at the whim of popular norms. I need a better framework than that.

Love God = Love yourself = Love your family = Love your neighbor = Love your enemies

That is a tall fucking order. I fail. Oh boy do I fail. I prioritize that list. I don’t know if that’s wrong, but it’s what I’m capable of. I see God’s love as pure and infinite. I see myself as having access to that infinite love. If I can focus on that, then I can love my children and family to the best of my ability. If I have this circle of loving humans around me, with God in my heart, then I can pour that energy into my neighbors and those who would be my enemies.

This sermon from Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., delivered in 1957 says a lot of what I’m trying to find in my soul:
Love Your Enemies
Transcript

Before hate comes fear. Fear of rejection drives us to dress alike and sound alike. That fear, and fear of discord, grips me hard as I try to communicate in love. I have been insulted by those I love, for things that I do not see as wrong. Dr. King reminds me that people will dislike me for all types of reasons. That’s not my lack of love, but theirs.

Please receive this in love. I welcome disagreement, I am on this planet to learn and grow. In these hot times, I hope we can cool the discourse and discover what troubles us deep down.

God bless, thank you, I appreciate you,
Jason