My wife and I went to see Sweet Honey in the Rock, an acapella ensemble of black women singers. In an audience of blacks and whites together, we sat with a lesbian friend next to some deaf women and gay businessmen. Some folks dressed in traditional African clothing, or American dress suits. I wore a biker jacket and jeans. There were kids there, and senior citizens. As the women on stage raised their voices in a combination of gospel songs, chants, invocations and affirmations, the audience joined in with a single voice. We applauded (some with hands in the air in a sign-language salute) even before the songs were through. And then we left, got in our cars, and went our separate ways - some to clubs, some to TVs, some to the Internet, where we could chat with people all over the world simply by pressing a few plastic keys.
How incredible.
How miraculous.
I'm not being facetious, here. I know it's hip to be jaded, to think the world is coming to an end and to curse everyone from the government to the b-boys down the street. But folks, we're obviously doing something right in this great experiment of ours, or the concert I attended would never have occurred.
Think about it.
At any other time in human history, this gathering would have been impossible. As recently as 30 years ago, it probably would have been illegal, even in this country, and it would still be illegal in many parts of the world today. Many of the tools that made last night possible didn't even exist within my lifetime, let alone the lifetimes of many people in that room. And yet to us, it was just a concert, a fun gathering with no life-altering significance. We just came together for a few hours, left, and took it for granted.
As dramatic as the show last night was, it really wasn't anything unusual. Every day, we share our lives with dozens, if not hundreds, of people of all kinds. For the most part, we can be open about who we are without being thrown in jail, and we interact with something approximating civility. Unless someone makes their difference our problem, we cruise on by, accepting diversity as part of our daily lives.
Do you have any idea how truly amazing that is?
It has never occurred before. Not on this scale. Not for this long. Yet we take that miracle for granted, even snub it. We sequesters ourselves behind TVs and attitudes, congregate in the same old groups and dare anyone who's "different" to cross the lines. Some of us even listen to hate-ridden demagogues, our Falwells and Farrakhans, Boortzes and Limbaughs, Dr. Lauras and Jerry Springers, who all tell us what a freak show our world has become. We call each other nigger and faggot and cracker and kike and breeder and feminazi and a thousand other terms for "one who is different." And we whisper to each other that if only "they" would get their acts together (usually by disappearing), the world would be a better place.
How sad. How self-destructive.
A friend and I were talking recently, and she mentioned (from a typical knee-jerk, Left-wing perspective) how this social experiment, begun and dominated by white men, was going to fall. "I hope it doesn't," I replied, "because while it has its problems, it's an incredible thing. Think about it: I'm a straight, white, Christo-pagan male; you're a bisexual, black, Wiccan woman. In any other society on earth, we could not and would not be friends, much less equals." She had to admit I had a point.
Which is not to say that our little experiment doesn't have problems. It has plenty of them, from racism to homelessness to poverty to conspiracy, to a level of self-inflicted violence few other nations have ever known. No question. And yet, by the standards of most of the world and all other periods in history, our lot is better than any other. Our poorest citizens have the bare necessities. Our government does not shoot us down like dogs if we bark a little. Racism and domestic violence and rape and religious hatred are considered problems, not the status quo. In many other nations, these things are not true. We need to be grateful for what we have, and work to fix the things we know are wrong.
Otherwise, it will all go away.
We are our own worst enemies, we Americans. When we band together, no one can beat us. No culture on the face of the Earth - not now, not ever - has had the resources, diversity, technology and freedom that we enjoy. I do a lot of traveling, and while I've seen countries with less pollution or less violence or more civility or more wealth, I have never seen a place with our combination of all these things together. And yet, we bitch constantly and wait for the whole thing to fall apart so we can feel better about our private grievances. We cut our own throats, and give credence to the doomsayers.
We should be ashamed. To have so much and to appreciate it so little.
Let's give ourselves some credit. For just a day or two, let's stop bitching about what's wrong with our society and open our eyes to what's right about it. Give thanks to our gods (however we define them), and make a little extra effort to recognize those gods in each other's faces. Having done that, let's see what we can do to make things better for everyone, rather than just for ourselves. Respect for others. Responsibility for ourselves. Reverence for this "experiment" of ours. It's really not that hard.
The experiment is working. Let's keep it around a while.
For nearly a decade, Phil has approached dark fantasy with an actor's eye and a storyteller's heart. In addition to short stories in various anthologies (among them Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress, Backstage Passes, Dragons!, and City of Darkness), Phil has authored or co-authored over 80 books for White Wolf, Inc., and written a handful of political columns for various magazines. During more than five years as a White Wolf staffer, he co-created many of that company's roleplaying game lines (including Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, and the award-winningly subversive Mage: The Ascension), and collaborated with Storm Constantine, Owl Goingback, Robert Weinberg, and other noted fantasists.
Now independent, Phil continues to write for White Wolf while working on a new series of fantasy novels, his RPG line Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade, and several other projects as well. A Pagan with Christian tendencies (or vice versa), he feels it's essential to believe in something, question everything, and take nothing at face value.
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