Neighbors and brothers make for the most bitter of enemies. Just look at any number of historic rivalries for evidence: As an interloper, one is always puzzled, and even entertained, by how closely the opponents resemble one another, despite the denials of the warring parties themselves.

Who can tell a Greek from a Turk, or a Turk from a Kurd? What’s the difference between a Chinese, a Japanese and a Vietnamese? Are Indians and Pakistanis truly that distinguishable, or for that matter Pakistanis and Bangladeshis? What about Frenchmen and Germans, or the English and Irish?

Whether you examine Arabs and Jews or Russians and Ukrainians or Ukrainians or Poles or Poles and Germans, you will find bitter histories which call into question their common cultural and linguistic ties. It is actually extraordinary how our human minds can make so much of so very little, and conversely reduce to nothing all that we have in common.

Africa is a most fascinating example for African-Americans raised on a diet composed of victim-hood. What stupefies many African-Americans is the extremely entrenched loathings different clans have for one another. Kikuyu against Masai, Tutsi against Hutu, Hausa against Igbo against Yoruba it’s all very silly, as an independent 3rd party can straight away see.

And it’s all human nature, naturally. Many of us who grew up with brothers can attest to quite a few rivalries in our adolescence, and plenty still maintain uneasy relations with their relations. Then there are our neighbors, whether we all know them or not “hell is other people”, as Jean-Paul Sartre stated in all gravity.

The United States of America is the most engaging experiment in getting along there is. For it is in the U. S. that former enemies can get along to oppose new ones,eg Germans and Poles against Mexicans, and new enemies can be made among people who previously had no contact at all, such as Koreans and blacks.

Learn more about neighbors. Stop by www.article1society.com site where you can find out all about brothers and what they can do for you.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.