Who Is This “We”?
One of Aesop’s fables tells of a mule driver who set forth on a journey with a mule and a donkey.
Both were overburdened, though so long as they were on the plains, the donkey could cope. However, when they reached the mountains, the donkey began to groan under his load.
“Hey, mule, would you please help me just a bit?” the donkey pleaded.
“Are you joking?” the mule snorted. “Carry your load? It’s what has been given to you! Grin and bear it!”
Soon, the strain became too much and the donkey fell dead.
Caught unprepared in a place far from anywhere, the mule driver’s only choice was to shift the load from the dead donkey to the living mule. Plus, he skinned the donkey, to sell his hide, which added that much more weight.
As he groaned under the unbearable burden, the mule said to himself: “I’ve earned this suffering. Who would not help another now bears all.”
Ah, “it was all so simple then,” as the old song goes, in those days of the divine right of kings. The royal “we” meant “me and everybody.” Or else.
Those good ol’ days go back to at least the Egyptian pharaohs (beginning 3100 BCE), continuing through the Xia dynasty in China (beginning in 1046 BCE), right up to our own time in some nations. But nowadays in most nations, kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers can say “we” all they like, but who, besides a few extremists on the right, believes in a theologico-political order that requires one to love it or leave it?
And if gods don’t guarantee a “we,” who does?
As I mentioned last week, in Western nations and those such as the United States that have been Westernized through invasion, the political order has for the most part stopped claiming to rule in the name of a god, substituting instead “the will of the people.” A god of another sort, as is the magic of the free market.
Which people presents some difficulties, however. There are many mules who are disinclined to carry the donkey’s load, whether that burden be paying taxes to help finance medical insurance for the poor or participating in a firefight in Afghanistan.
The contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy asks a simple question about national politics: when are we “capable of saying ‘we’?”
In the US anyway, the bumper stickers come out right after each presidential election, whichever way the vote goes: “Not my president!”
Well, actually, yes: your president. Yet, the bumper sticker makes sense to most citizens of the US of A. Of all places, perhaps the US, with our traditional insistence on individuality and individual rights, is the least likely place to have any sort of “we” possible.
Yet the old fable of Aesop remains true — the burden is the burden. Neither donkey nor mule chose it. But “we” are on the same journey, like it or not. So. How do we get to “we”?
The will of God isn’t much help. It’s difficult imagining that the priests of ancient Egypt — or even the priests of Victorian England — offered much in the way of critique toward government. Nowadays, however, god supports all sides of just about any political issue that arises. (Take for instance the continuing fight over birth control.)
The donkey god and the mule god whisper very different commands. Therefore, even for the religious, gods no longer guarantee a “we.” Liberal religions argue for human rights, while conservative religions argue for civil responsibility. Seldom the twain shall meet.
Nancy encourages thought about far more than political legitimacy, however. Human beings are social animals. Nancy’s fundamental point is that being — which in this case probably needs a capital B — is always “being with;” that “I” cannot exist without “we.”
“We” is about “being-with.” In Aesop’s fable, the donkey appeals to a “we” that the mule refuses to acknowledge until it is too late. Yet, as the story makes clear, there always was a “we.” Acknowledging this “we” requires not only sharing and compassion but also the vulnerability of saying a very costly “yes” to those we would perhaps prefer to consider “the other.” This “we” is not a loss of “I” but an expansion of the “I” to embrace what is perhaps more comfortably seen as “the other.”
The gods may have once required a “we” in human social groups, but now we have to decide on getting into a “we” relationship because . . . it’s the right thing to do.
No one is an island. The bell tolls for us all. We know this, though it’s easy to forget. This is why the argument that Humanism replaces the concept of god with a heightened concept of the individual human is a fallacy. Humanism is about co-existence.
Think of it this way: go ahead and consider yourself a self-sufficient god after you can answer your own 911 call. Until then, be like donkey, not like mule.
