The Lives of Others - Article

Dusk had fallen on the landscape like a thick blanket when we entered the town. Our vehicle bumped along the hole-scarred highway lined with wooden shacks. We were silhouetted by the shacks’ solitary light bulbs: the town’s only illumination. We rounded a bend and our path was blocked. A crowd of perhaps one hundred Ethiopian men danced and jumped in the street. They sang and waved their walking sticks giving us the impression that we had stumbled upon an impromptu celebration. As we inched forward into the mass, something changed in the space of an instant. The crowd enveloped the vehicle and began to shake it and beat the hood with their sticks. The reason for the change was written into their faces: they had seen my bearded white face in the back seat. Now the thump of sticks off the hood was accompanied by a multitude of outstretched hands demanding payment. In the midst of panic I realized that producing my wallet would have only worsened the situation. My sense of isolation was palpable. Regardless of the fact that I was in a vehicle with several Ethiopian friends I felt completely alone – the only white man in this corner of Africa.

After what seemed like an eternity, a man appeared shouting at the crowd and pushing them from the front of the vehicle. Our mystery benefactor cleared a small opening and we pushed forward and out of the town. As we entered the impenetrable darkness of the African night, our expedition cook turned to me from the front seat.
“They drank the local beer,” he said with a smile as calm and collected as he ever was. It was as if the situation had never weighed on his mind in the slightest.
These moments had been indicative of the best and the worst of an encounter with the Other. My difference, the colour of my skin, had been the catalyst of the meeting. Assumptions were made on both sides; neither side was capable of seeing past the prejudice of the moment to the truth of the matter. The group saw a rich westerner; an easy rube to be intimidated for benefit. I saw an unruly mob and probably imagined more danger than was really present. Yet in the end an unspoken dialogue prevailed. The man had pointed out to the crowd that they were being belligerent and putting themselves in a position of domination over me to extort reward. I was a visitor to this country and this, the man reasoned with the crowd, was highly inappropriate. This sense of action as being wrong was not Ethiopian, it was common to all humans. They left, only temporarily shamed out of song and dance to grant me a reprieve, and I departed relieved and shamed by the depth of my racially motivated fear. Nothing had been said and yet everything had been known.

The cook’s calm smile and reassuring words were important in their own right. However much we had come to know each other and however much we shared in common as human beings – we came from different worlds. In my world violence was a phenomenon most commonly experienced through watching the nightly news. Aside from the odd hallmarks of crime, such as seeing some yellow police tape in front of a local restaurant, it was largely foreign to me. And when I did see signs it was with the same grim glee as a motorist slowly driving past a highway accident.

As our vehicle drove on into the warm night, I took stock: there was an entire geography of context to understand in this country. This was a country where the proliferation of automatic weapons amongst the populace was absolutely commonplace. This was a country where the burnt carcasses of tanks and armored cars littered the fields. This was a country where a few cafes had grenades thrown into them shortly before I arrived. This was a country that had felt the despair of famine and the terror of war both in the very memorable past. A crowd of drunks haranguing one’s vehicle was barely something about which to raise an eyebrow.

Fear, however, real, unadulterated fear, is often the byproduct of a meeting with Others. In one sense it is a primal fear of the unknown harkening back to when humans existed in small clan groups and always risked encounters with other clans. As the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski put it, we are then faced with three choices. We can fence ourselves off from the Others and pursue an isolated existence. We can enter into dialogue with them and attempt to grow stronger with each others’ help. Or, we can enter into war with the Others. All too often, one can imagine that fear triumphed and war was the result. All we have to do is look at the innumerable conflicts around the world based on perceived difference and ethnicity. The unspeakably bloody results of Rwanda, Chechnya, and Bosnia added to what we witness everyday in Darfur, push us as social actors to somehow see past impulsive prejudice and conquer the fear.

When it comes to encountering difference, dialogue is the currency of cooperation. Without dialogue how can an Israeli come to terms with someone who is willing to blow himself up to fight what he sees as unjust oppression? Without an honest attempt at mutual understanding how can the average white American understand that the motives of terrorists are more complex than just idiomatic statements like “They hate our freedom,”? However, getting beyond the fear and towards a multilateral debate with others is no easy task and the cards are stacked against any who would try. In spite of this, rising above the anxiety of contact with those who are different from us is the most important task a person may be confronted with in contributing to a full and lasting peace in the world. We must not forget that in an encounter with Others, one learns important truths about oneself. In the words of Emmanuel Levinas, “…the self is only possible through recognition of the Other.” This is not always a pleasant or welcome experience – but it is vital. We immerse ourselves in a new context of being, essentially, in a new world. We are alone and we are whole. We are no longer a pastiche of our Western friends and values. We can become the Other and understand instead of drawing back in fear.

If we look at the globe, all we see are groups of Others trying to coexist. Boundaries are everywhere demarking difference: by race, by class, by country, by religion, or on a larger scale, North vs. South, East vs. West, First World and Third World, Occident and Orient. Perhaps the boundary that matters most is one defined by inequality: the boundary between the enfranchised and the disenfranchised, the haves and the have-nots. The gulf between those with power in the cabinets and boardrooms of the world and those in the streets crying out to be heard is the most chaotic and socially explosive of global divisions. It was just such a chasm of understanding into which I fell that night in the small mountain village. The men in the street saw an outsider with means: a man whose wealth allowed him to visit their country. Mine was the face of the ‘faranji’, the face of one who hides behind a camera lens and powers through their landscape in air-conditioned range rovers. Perhaps I angered them. Perhaps they were tired of being a display for self-important travelers. Perhaps they thought I owed them something.
All around us we see fences, wars and dialogue. Those with influence and capital build walls to protect them from the Others. Theirs’ is the dialogue of alliances of groups of others seeking domination of everyone else. They view the problems of the world through the strictly reductive lens of an economic prism while hiding behind their fences of police blockades and tear gas. Not surprisingly, it is fear of Others that guides their hands. It is a fear of what such an encounter would mean and, more importantly, what it might mean to the socioeconomic status quo that they have enjoyed so thoroughly for so long. However, the policies of exclusion and the deification of economic determinism have brought us to the chasm before which we stand and a serious altering of the status quo, if not complete overhauling, is due.

It is only the dialogue of inclusion and cooperation that has any chance of bridging the gap. The World Social Forum is a commendable example of groups of Others coming together and seeking solutions through multilateral assistance. They work to give a voice to the silenced. We must never forget that the whole Othering project, which sets us apart with difference is undermined by the primacy of human experience. We all take pride in our accomplishments and regret our failures; appreciate honesty and do not accept lies; feel comfortable and safe in a warm home and feel destitute in the cold street; we all demand dignity and the right to have our voices heard. The list can go on and on. This primacy unites us all, rich and poor, and is the key to breaching the fences of our world and opening productive lines of dialogue. In an age when environmental threats couple with economic and social ones to threaten the very existence of global order, meeting the Other on common ground and realizing our ultimate sameness is fundamental to our survival.