The Most Bitter Of Eneimes: Neighbours And Brothers
Saturday, 15 May 2010 07:03 | 
Written by Ace C. Erin |
Neighbors and brothers make for the most bitter of enemies. Just look at any number of historic competitions for proof: As an intruder, one is always puzzled, and even amused, by how closely the opponents seem like each other, regardless of the denials of the warring parties themselves.
Neighbors and brothers make for the most bitter of enemies. Just look at any number of historic competitions for proof: As an intruder, one is always puzzled, and even amused, by how closely the opponents seem like each other, regardless of the denials of the warring parties themselves.
Who can tell a Greek from a Turk, or a Turk from a Kurd? What is the difference between a Chinese, a Japanese and a Vietnamese? Are Indians and Pakistanis really that distinguishable, or for that matter Pakistanis and Bangladeshis? What about Frenchmen and Germans, or the English and Irish?
Whether you examine Arabs and Jews or Russians and Ukrainians or Ukrainians or Poles or Poles and Germans, you will find bitter histories which challenge their common cultural and linguistic ties. It is really extraordinary how our human minds can make most of so very little, and conversely reduce to nothing all that we have in common.
Africa is a most fascinating example for African-Americans raised on a diet comprised of victim-hood. What stupefies many African-Americans is the extremely entrenched loathings different tribes have for one another. Kikuyu against Masai, Tutsi against Hutu, Hausa against Igbo against Yoruba it's all really silly, as an independent third party can straight away see.
And it's all human nature, naturally. Many of us who grew up with brothers can attest to quite a few rivalries in our adolescence, and plenty still maintain uneasy relations with their relations. Then there are our neighbors, whether we all know them or not "hell is other people", as Jean-Paul Sartre stated in all gravity.
The United States of America is the most engaging experiment in getting along there is. For it is in the U. S. that former enemies can get along to oppose new ones,eg Germans and Poles against Mexicans, and new enemies can be made among people who previously had no contact at all, such as Koreans and blacks.
Neighbors and brothers make for the most bitter of enemies. Just look at any number of historic competitions for proof: As an intruder, one is always puzzled, and even amused, by how closely the opponents seem like each other, regardless of the denials of the warring parties themselves.
Who can tell a Greek from a Turk, or a Turk from a Kurd? What is the difference between a Chinese, a Japanese and a Vietnamese? Are Indians and Pakistanis really that distinguishable, or for that matter Pakistanis and Bangladeshis? What about Frenchmen and Germans, or the English and Irish?
Whether you examine Arabs and Jews or Russians and Ukrainians or Ukrainians or Poles or Poles and Germans, you will find bitter histories which challenge their common cultural and linguistic ties. It is really extraordinary how our human minds can make most of so very little, and conversely reduce to nothing all that we have in common.
Africa is a most fascinating example for African-Americans raised on a diet comprised of victim-hood. What stupefies many African-Americans is the extremely entrenched loathings different tribes have for one another. Kikuyu against Masai, Tutsi against Hutu, Hausa against Igbo against Yoruba it's all really silly, as an independent third party can straight away see.
And it's all human nature, naturally. Many of us who grew up with brothers can attest to quite a few rivalries in our adolescence, and plenty still maintain uneasy relations with their relations. Then there are our neighbors, whether we all know them or not "hell is other people", as Jean-Paul Sartre stated in all gravity.
The United States of America is the most engaging experiment in getting along there is. For it is in the U. S. that former enemies can get along to oppose new ones,eg Germans and Poles against Mexicans, and new enemies can be made among people who previously had no contact at all, such as Koreans and blacks.
