Taking a break from the heavy stuff to explore a thought.

We will start here : there are such a thing as natural communities.

And by “natural” I simply mean self-organizing as a result of human social instincts causing us to naturally form tribe, families, cliques, and so on.

Any group of people above a certain size will form these subgroups. It is the nature of the beast – the beast being us. Once a community exceeds the carrying capacity of its unifying identity, mitosis is inevitable and the only question remaining becomes whether the two new groups will both retain the original identity or if they will form their own new, unique identity that better serves their needs.

The important thing to note here is that the original identity can be retained That is because identity is not unitary in human beings : we easily accept and assimilate multiple layers of identity as long as those layers do not directly conflict with each other.

For example, starting with the outside and working our way in, I am a Canadian, a Prince Edward Islander, a Summerside boy, and part of the Bertrand family.

These identities do not conflict. Instead, they fit inside one another like a Russian nesting doll. A Prince Edward Islander is a kind of Canadian. And a Summerside boy is a kind of Islander.

And that’s just the governmental level of identity. In addition to my geopgraphical indicators, I am a graduate of VFS, a Furry, a nerd, a gay man, a Terry Pratchett fan, and so many others it would take an n-dimensional Venn diagram to map them.

And we are all like this in this modern world. We are all members of dozens of communities, each of which may very well have its own norms and etiquette, and we switch between them so smoothly we don’t even know we are doing it.

As I have said, this is possible only when the layers of identity do not conflict with one another. There is nothing about being an Islander that would keep me from being a Terry Pratchett fan. There is nothing about being a nerd that conflicts with my being a graduate of VFS.

And so forth and so on.

And then we come to that very special group to which we all belong : humanity. To me, the one big achievement of Christianity was to introduce humanism to the world as a replacement for the old, broken, and tired tribalism that came before it.

The idea that we are all part of one giant community called humanity began with them.

And 2019 years later,. we are still working on understanding it.

I just wrote this on Facebook :

I  feel like the history of modernity consists of Jesus (or whoever) saying “Love everybody. ” and humanity saying “Oh sure. Love everybody who counts. 
J : No, I said EVERYBODY. 
H : Right, right, everybody…. but these people. 
J : No, I SAID LOVE ALL PEOPLE. 
H : Oh. Then those people aren’t people. 
J : Are they biologically human? 
H : Well…. technically, yes, but not like you and me. 
J : Did I fucking stutter? LOVE ALL HUMAN BEINGS. 
H : Oh, sure, sure. Love everyone who doesn’t scare me. 
J : Read my fucking lips…. LOVE. ALL. HUMANS. 
H : But…. surely you don’t mean love X. 
J : I mean exactly that! X are just as human as you are and therefore you should love them. 
H : Well okay. 
J : Finally! Me Christ, you people are thick. 
H: But not Y. I mean,. Y are gross. Right? 
J : OH MY FUCKING DAD….

I am rather proud of that. It came out pretty much perfect.

Also, add this to my “angry, bitter messiah” file along with this :

And just think : that process is by no means over. There are groups we revile and repress right now that the progress of humanism over generations will exonerate and hold up as victims of prejudice and mob mentality.

Pedophiles might be next. Who knows?

Now it is obvious that creating a new overriding identity that can contain multiple existing identities is extremely difficult. Getting people to accept any kind of identity with which they are unfamiliar is hard enough, but when it’s a new Venn circle attempting to encircle all the rest, it’s damned near impossible.

But it can be done.

Sadly, over the course of history, this has mostly been accomplished via empire. Your little village, tribe, or city-state gets its ass kicked by a huge freaking army, and someone comes along and tells you that you are now a Roman (or Mongol, or Frenchman, or whatever), and it either sticks or it doesn’t.

The general rule seems to be that if you can make it stick via force for a generation, you can make it permanent. Sure, you hate the fucking Romans for all that killing and rapind they did, but your kids have been Romans all their lives and have trouble seeing what the big deal is.

It’s not always been conquest. Sometimes it’s even been by mutual consent. The USA, after all, first came together by the mutual accord of the 13 original States.

And here in Canada, we have, of course, the Fathers of Confederation, who undertook the mind boggling job of convincing people of the West Coast, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes that they were Canadians.

No wonder he had to more or less bribe people into it.

“Come join Confederation, and be proud Canadians, and unite to stop the encroachment of those heathens to the south of us!”

“Mmmmm… I don’t know…. ”

“*sigh* We will give you a ton of money and bring the railroad. ”

“In that case, GO CANABA! “

“It’s CANADA. ”

“Right, Canada, whatever… ”

And the thing is, it worked. I am Canadian. Living in the USA taught me that.

Because the real test of community identity on the social level is whether or not said identity correctly groups you with people with whom you have more in common than you do with the average outgroup human being.

And living with Americans made me realize that I had more in common with my fellow Canadians than merely the last part of my postal address.

Because Americans are fucking crazy,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.