Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture. It is an organization that has been around since 1876. They meet in a beautiful brownstone on Park Slope up near Prospect Park. The atmosphere was family-friendly, open minded, generous, respectful, playful. I had prepared by meditating on the two words together: ethical and culture as they might pertain to my talk. If asked, I wager most people in America would say Afghanistan tops the list of the most unethical culture in the world today. After all, what do we all know? Beheadings, stoning, oppression of women, corruption, heroin central, not to mention the infamous host to Bin Laden. Prone as I am these days to hold the mirror the minute I become critical, looking through the same one-dimensional lens how particularly ethical has the U.S. been in a matching thirty year period? I got lost going down this path, and didn’t know what I would say.
This was the first time I’ve spoken to an intergenerational group. My palms were sweating, my mind spinning. What was I going to say? Then one of the parents commented before I began speaking that she had just watched the movie Avatar and that it made her think of Afghanistan. Her reasons may have had to do with the obvious allusions in the movie to hired guns (Blackwater et al.) making way for a greedy corporate agenda, but I was too dizzy to ask. I also had just watched the film, and for personal reasons it also prompted me to think of Afghanistan. Though I love the movie for its artistic vision, I hate it for its story. Once again we get served the myth of the Byronic hero’s encounter with the “Barbarian”. How many hundreds of times we’ve seen this myth, I can only guess. In film alone I think of a dozen right off the top of my head, Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves and Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai topping the recent list. The dark hero is down and out. (Almost always a man.) He throws himself into the land of the barbarian to a) end his miserable life or b) renew himself. He undergoes a series of trials to prove himself to the barbarians. He finally is indoctrinated. He falls in love with the people. Then the barbarians are attacked by the established, dominant culture. The hero must choose. In the end he defends his new tribe.
Does any of this storyline sound familiar?
Suddenly divorced, father fighting for life in hospital, book deal falls through, dog dies, home gone, no job, debt building, a man goes into a tailspin: off to the land of Barbarians for me. I made these connections in front of the society for ethical culture and I confronted them with what I hoped one day would be a new ending to the myth. Yes, the tourist becomes witness, but she or he does not have to choose sides or perish, and certainly doesn’t need to take on the role of savior.
First, the myth needs to be examined further. The scenario initially drives minorities insane because it is always the great white hope who is necessary for the “natives” to defend their world. But this story is intrinsically more complex than a way to feel better about cultural genocide. It goes back to the western Christian yearning to return to the “garden”. The garden is idealized and consequently unattainable. Because of this the myth is not only a cheaply won atonement of sins committed by the dominant culture; it is the allowance by default for the rest of the world, presumably not of the garden, to get trashed. I didn’t remotely know what I’d do once I returned to my culture. Emotionally I have never left the orphanage. I tell and retell the story of those children, the story of the barbarians as us. We see ourselves in those kids, and a bridge is built. This is no manipulation of empathy. People are shocked; they have been so misled. But they cannot but believe their eyes and ears.
It was a good talk, there in Brooklyn. The children, as usual, asked the most piercing questions. What food did you eat? What did the children do for fun? Did you find it difficult to teach? Did you miss home? Who was your favorite orphan? These are piercing because at the root they presume a connection between us and them. Adults ask what you’d expect: Should we be there? What about Karzai? Aren’t the big NGO’s good for something? Aren’t the girls going to be oppressed regardless of their upbringing? This may have been my best talk yet, primarily because of the mix of adults and their children.
I’m hoping I brought a little of the garden to Brooklyn. One need not look to the other world to discover the beauty of connectedness. Now I am in Baltimore, soon Washington, and then all over North Carolina. I anticipate new experiences, different challenges. But whatever happens, I will not distinguish between the “otherness” of the orphanage and my own dominant culture. When you watch the movie Avatar, imagine the blue-green people are right there beside you in the theater, at the checkout counter, picking up your garbage, teaching your children, building the addition to your house. Imagine they are right inside of you.