What can bring us together?
By Marty Richman
I have a simple question that has no simple answer. Why is it
that a single event for a good cause like the Relay for Life, a
fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, can bring the community
together when so many other things tear it apart?
Anyone who knows Hollister and San Benito County recognizes that
we are splintered into many parts that often appear to be at war,
yet for one or two days each year, all the personal and political
animosities are put aside and everyone focuses on the cause. Last
year my wife noticed something peculiar at the event
– although it was very crowded, almost no one threw any trash on
the ground.
What can bring us together?
By Marty Richman
I have a simple question that has no simple answer. Why is it that a single event for a good cause like the Relay for Life, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, can bring the community together when so many other things tear it apart?
Anyone who knows Hollister and San Benito County recognizes that we are splintered into many parts that often appear to be at war, yet for one or two days each year, all the personal and political animosities are put aside and everyone focuses on the cause. Last year my wife noticed something peculiar at the event – although it was very crowded, almost no one threw any trash on the ground.
Events this size usually result in a blizzard of trash, but not this one. I think the attendees took extra care out of respect for the good purpose and for the victims of cancer, both with us and gone. Cancer does not care about your political beliefs and that there are some things we have in common that can overcome the things that make us different.
In many ways, our community is exactly like most of America today both philosophically and politically. We have disintegrated into small groups defined, primarily, by what’s best for our group and for us. Our groups and personal experiences often shape our beliefs. Obviously, our beliefs then influence how we treat others and how we are treated. It all goes around in a big circle. A fancy term for the predictable results of this circle is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The numbers of filters we use to form our small groups are almost endless. They include race, class, gender, sexual preference, age, location, profession, education, religion, heritage, language and culture, among many others. The latter three or four items are often lumped together and called ethnicity. Even the primary filters have filters of their own. It’s common for political flyers to say, “I’ve lived here my whole life” or something of the sort. That filters those living here – a large group – down to those who have lived here their whole lives – a much smaller group.
If one were to study the endless list of filters, it’s obvious that most of them tend to make groups smaller and more exclusive. You’re likely to find many combinations of various attributes in any large population. As these filters are applied, layer by layer, we tend to become filtered – that is unique – individuals with unique outlooks that clash with the unique outlooks of others, especially in the political arena. I often act the same way because I’m only human; I’m a veteran and I give special deference to other veterans. Sometimes the needs and wants of different people and groups happen to coincide and they agree, temporarily, on what they should do. Thus comes the term, “politics makes strange bedfellows.” However, that’s the exception, not the rule.
The rule is we are more pulled apart than welded together because it’s easier for politicians and political activists, the latter rarely interested in compromise, to play up the differences between groups. Understanding the many things that separate us is much easier than understanding the few things that bring us together. Yet, the things that bring us together do exist and they can, overcome everything else on occasions, it cannot be denied.
Perhaps the Relay for Life and similar campaigns can do more than just support the good causes they represent; perhaps they can provide the basic blueprint of how we can use the forces that bring us together to get things done. Defeating cancer and showing how we can make the community prosper would be two great accomplishments for one program.
