Difference, Commonality, and the Potential for Unity

The premise of human commonality, unequivocally proven by the Human Genome Project, demonstrated just how similar we are as a species. Why can’t we translate commonality into unity? Of course, it’s our differences that trip us up. 

That’s where identity comes in. For the last few generations, “identity politics” has come under fire, and justly so. Playing politics with categories that are either unchanging or fluid is like cutting our collective noses to spite our face—it’s a temporary response to a current or immediate predicament, but, ultimately and in retrospect, that narrow approach won’t take us where we need to go.

Yet, identity itself is fundamental to human existence. Who am I? Who are we? Perennial questions. 

For instance, just who are we as Americans? And on what basis can there be a semblance of unity? Our differences as Americans are more than skin deep.

In the vast, sprawling North American continent, our differences can be seen in terms of region. Our differences are political, as demonstrated in the last election where hyperpolarization became even more entrenched. No matter who won, half of the population would have thought it illegitimate on one level or another.

If there is to be a shared national identity, it won’t be based on region or state or political affiliation. 

Neither will it be based on ethnicity or certainly not on race, two social categories that highlight difference way more than commonality. 

Neither can it be based on economic status, especially considering vast wealth differentials, where no longer does each succeeding generation expect to rise in economic standing beyond the previous generation. 

Don’t get me wrong: yes, we share a capitalist economic system based on the concept of free enterprise, which I view not only in economic terms. Free enterprise is, as Albert Murray once put it, “an experimental attitude, an openness to improvisation.” As a second-generation entrepreneur who has successfully raised capital and built a business that sustains my family, I am a beneficiary of that system. 

However, let’s reason together. On one hand, crony capitalism chokes competition via monopolistic or oligopolistic behavior in the market; on the other, the combination of unfettered market power by a handful of technology companies whom we all could name plus the coming transformation of the economy and workforce by Artificial Intelligence are wiping out entire categories of work and entire industries to boot. 

Our unity is unlikely to come in the economic sphere. 

So, upon what can we base an American identity that we can share beyond our many differences?

The first place is in our first principles as a nation. Where are those principles found? They’re found, first, in what Ralph Ellison called our sacred documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Many point to the hypocrisy of the founders, who not only didn’t live up to those principles but violated them egregiously by being slave holders. 

I won’t excuse the founders for that fact. But neither will I engage in presentism—judging them solely by the standards of today—nor will I equivocate on the power of the vision they enacted, a democratic magnet for people all over the world, especially those living under tyranny, despotism, and authoritarianism. 

I will not apologize for embracing democracy and democratic principles as superior, in terms of human freedom, to the competing systems I’ve just mentioned. So, the primary principles of the nation, if viewed as founding values and grounding ideals that inspire us to keep working and striving to make them more and more real, could and should be a source of common ground for all American citizens, no matter our differences. 

Yet the common ground of our liberal, humanistic values, these days, doesn’t seem to be enough. We also need higher ground, higher octaves of transcendent meaning and value. The dominance of scientific and technological development outpacing our moral imagination and capacities, not to mention the way it’s eclipsed myth and religion, is leaning toward a technological and economic elite being in control of the AI algorithms that surveil our daily lives. That’s one of several possible futures whose dystopic potential frightens. 

I tend to agree with Jamie Wheal, who in the revelatory Recapture the Rapture poses a necessary trio for the human family—not only Americans—to survive and ultimately thrive: catharsis, ecstasis, and communitas.

Jamie says the above is sort of like “the blockchain of conscious culture. If we can remember our greatest inspiration, mend our deepest traumas and connect with each other near and far, we stand a chance.”

For more details, I urge you to read his book for yourself or to give it a listen.