Jude was a flower, a sunflower. He lived in a field of
sunflowers. Jude’s petals were bright yellow and he had a lot of them. His
cluster of stamens, right in the center of his face, was brown. His stem was green
and his stem had leaves.
Right next to Jude was Tommy. On his other side was Jane. In
front of him was Michael and behind was Patrice. Like Jude, each of his four
neighbors had a lot of yellow leaves. Their stamens were brown. Their stem was
green and all of them had leaves. All five of them needed sunlight, not too
much, but just enough. They all also needed plenty of water.
Jude reassured himself constantly that he was different. And
to an extent, he was.
There was a notch in one of his petals, a notch that he had
never seen duplicated in any other petal. If you looked closely, just to the
right of center, you could see a very, very faint speck of red among the
otherwise perfect field of brown. Jude had never heard of anyone else have such
a red speck.
And Jude found that he could stand just a bit more heat than
any of his neighbors. Of course, he would wither away if it got too hot, but
there were times when those around him were complaining of the oppressive sun
and Jude would feel fine.
See? Jude was different. And these differences should be
considered whenever we think of Jude, whenever we make a judgment about Jude.
But what Jude didn’t know was that, if viewed from a
sufficient height, he would be indistinguishable in a blurry field of yellow.
***
The paradox of human similarity, I think, was adequately
summarized by my sister one Christmas morning about 15 years ago. We both
received new yo-yos that holiday season. And they were the same. Besides the
fact that they were both yo-yos, served the same purpose and were both attached
to string, the yo-yos were the same design, made by the same company and formed
from the same hard plastic. They had the same gold lettering etched into their
sides. Except mine was blue and hers was red. “Chris! We got yo-yos,” she
shouts from an old video-cassette. “And they’re the same…but different!”
It is fascinating how similar we are. Over 99% of our genes
are shared. So are physical features like hands, feet, noses and skin. We walk
on two feet. We have opposable thumbs. We have sexual organs. Every human (or
every not mentally-ill human) appears capable of feeling some form of love.
It is also fascinating how arbitrarily we differentiate
ourselves. People are discriminated against because of skin color, nose shape,
sexual organ type or whom they love.
Taking into consideration how similar any human being is to
another, it is further fascinating to consider how important these differences
can be. Any bigoted person is about a million times more similar to any person
of the group against which he is bigoted than that bigot is similar to, say, an
anglerfish.
Yet how many slurs do humans have for anglerfish?
Similarities seem to magnify differences. Human
philosophers, theologians and lawmakers have long been obsessed with
establishing and justifying objective standards, operating with the belief that
humans are essentially the same (which, depending on perspective, they are). So
they’ve established codes which create a universal standard and enforce that
standard evenly across an assumed to be homogeneous population.
Of course that homogeneous population is not homogeneous.
Despite being “essentially” the same, despite being so similar that differences
are in many case imperceptible, humans are not the same. So should we still be
searching for objectivity or for universality? Should those who are different
be forced to adjust to fit the whims of whichever truth we as a society has
decided to be universally applicable.[1]
Should differently shaped cogs be ground into uniformity against the machine of
society, or should their uniqueness be preserved?
What is the more important: the fact that every human being
on the planet earth has a nose, ears, eyes and a mouth or the fact that each
human being has a different nose, ears, eyes and mouth than any other?
I, personally, like different. Of course I may prove to be
too much of a relativist to impose that standard on anyone else.
[1] Of course we must admit
that these truths change. After all, most of us now agree that darker skinned
races are not inherently inferior to their lighter skinned counterparts. And it
only took almost the entirety of human civilization to come to this reasonable
conclusion.
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