The Possibilities of Exile
We all like to belong. We humans have lived in little belonging groups for many thousands of years now, and knowing who is "us" and who is "not us", or, shall we say, who is "them", is central to our sense of well-being and order. Yet we now live in a world populated by refugees and the dislocated, whether people are fleeing violence & famine or searching for opportunity. Globalization is not just something to protest against - it is a reality, with people, products, culture, plants, animals, microorganisms, and toxins moving physically and virtually around the world in a constant stream. "Us" and "them" are becoming hopelessly mixed up, and this can be deeply unsettling to the social animals that we are.
We have some options here: we can mourn our losses and search for some golden age of insularism through xenophobia and fundamentalism; we can form little identity groups (say, anti-war left-handed Jewish women who play the piano) and try to hunker down within them; or we can take one giant step into a place that affords us a larger, more expansive sense of belonging.
When we have no place that is our home, every place can be home to us; when we are not with our people, any people could be ours. There is available to us in the experience of exile a far wider sense of belonging than is present in the clan, the language, the country. To feel part of not just our people, but of all people; not just human animals, but all animals; not just animal life, but all life - that is a profound sense of belonging. We are familiar with the mythic exile stories - the exile from The Garden, from the time when everything was connected, when we could speak with the animals and with each other. Paradoxically, we have the possibility of rewriting those ancient exile stories when we find ourselves in exile from our little group, our clan, our small association - when we find "us" bumping up against "them".
Experiences of exile and belonging do not happen only in our lives, they happen in our minds. What this means is that when we are mentally exiled - when we are no longer thinking the thoughts of our group - there is suddenly a whole new range of thinking available to us. Where there was one way, there are now many. The reward for the discomfort of the displacement is increased liveliness - life becomes more interesting, more thoughts and feelings and experiences and connections are available to us.
I am speaking to "us" here, not just to or about "them". For while progressives make claims to inclusiveness and universality, we create our own ghettos - or country clubs, if you will - of belonging, both ideological and stylistic. Those who are not members are deemed wicked ("the neocons" & their ilk), stupid (the poor masses deluded by the wicked), or crazy (anyone who does not neatly fit into the other two categories). Whether it is a ghetto or a country club into which we have sequestered ourselves, it is a place of limited possibility and connection. It is far more lively at the crossroads.
We live in a time of exile, and the pain of exile and dislocation are everpresent. It may be that this pain, this unhappy departure from home, is the very thing that can bring us to a broad sense of connection and interdependence - something that it appears we will need if we are to navigate out of the global mess we are in. Letting go our small comfortable sense of allegiance to the group, our clan, in favor of a broader connection might not just be the only way out of this mess, it might actually make us happy. In the language of myths and fairy tales, and appearing in an appropriately unlikely and chaotic form, this could be our heart's desire.