Living the Dream— Deconstructing Our Identity in the Human Family

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In the movie,Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Arthur, “son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeator of the Saxons, sovereign of all England,” is on a quest to find the legendary Holy Grail. In a remote, muddy hill country, Arthur travels, seeking knights to join his sacred quest. Here he encounters Dennis, a bedraggled 37-year-old man from an anarcho-syndicalist mud collective and a female comrade--neither have ever heard of the Britons, nor any King, So Arthur, King of the Britons, attempts to explain:

King Arthur: I am your king.
Peasant Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.
King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Peasant Woman: Well, how'd you become king, then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.
Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis the Peasant: You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

In the ancient tale of Camelot, upon which this Monty Python parody is loosely based, this, pretty much, describes how Arthur is made King of the Britons. In medieval society, the King was ordained by God or by some other supernatural entity, such as a “watery tart [throwing] swords,” to establish a natural order wherein the class of nobility ruled over the peasantry by divine providence.

Similarly, in the early 19^th century collection of Grimms’ Fairytales, the story of Eve and her Children recounts how, after leaving Eden, Adam and Eve settled down and began to make a life for themselves. Here they beget a large family of a couple dozen kids. As the tale goes, half their offspring are handsome and half are ugly. When the Lord God announces that he will come for a visit, Eve tidies up the place and disconcertingly hides all her ugly children.

So when the Lord comes to the cottage, he meets the good-looking kids and blesses them, giving each a noble role and title. Impressed with the Lord’s generosity, Eve then brings out her ugly children. However, rather than a noble title, he gives each of them a job as blacksmith, weaver, carpenter, mason, laborer, tailor, seamstress, and so on. Taken a back, Eve asks why these children are not treated equally—to which, the Lord responds:

If they were all princes and lords, who would grow corn, thresh it, grind and bake it? Who would be blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters, masons, labourers, tailors and seamstresses? Each shall have his own place, so that one shall support the other, and all shall be fed like the limbs of one body.

Thus, wealth and class structure are ordained by the grace and wisdom of God so that all mankind may abide on the earth.

Today, a thousand years after the medieval tale of Camelot and two hundred years after Grimms published his fairytales, the belief in a magical ruling class continues to have its enthusiastic followers. There has been a resurgence worldwide of rightwing groups actively seeking to install authoritarian and oligarchic governments in the hope that their celebrated rulers will conserve the prejudicial power of their tribal group, protecting them against some adversarial strawman. Authoritarian power is inherently built on the foundation of fear and hatred of some outside group.

Likewise, in his mid-19^th century treatise, The Christian Doctrine of Slavery, George Armstrong, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Norfolk, Virginia gave a lengthy defense on why God has ordained for some to be Masters and others to be Slaves. His central argument is that White Christians must evangelize the sinful heathens from Africa, to bring them to Christ. And, at the same time, incongruently, to be the hand of God’s punishment for the Africans’ long history of sins.

Pastor George, then, argues that this is the natural course of god-given authority, in line with how the Neo-Apostle Paul described the subservient relationship between Husband and Wife, wherein a Man is head of his household, and his wife is his dutiful servant. Thusly, God ordains that the benevolent Masters of the superior White Christian race should oversee the weaker sinful and childlike races of Africa (and elsewhere) according to this same god-given authority. Colonialism, of course, was just another name for this evangelical Christian racism that spread across Africa and the Americas, and other parts of the globe—religion and economics under the flag of white supremacy—zealously destroying the lives and livelihood of indigenous people and societies everywhere for the glory of God and Gold.

On more charitable terms, Pastor George did argue that a good Christian Master should not mistreat his slaves, nor commit adultery, nor cause a slave’s family to be broken up. Notwithstanding, all these practices were, in fact, quite common in American slavery as a way for slave owners to maintain control over their ungrateful slaves, and to maximize profitability. After hundreds of years of American slavery and what I will politely call “adultery,” very few slaves were purely of African descent or, for that matter, had ever been in Africa. Thus, Pastor George’s entire argument was a bit contrived and confused.

At this point, Southern slave owners were predominantly enslaving their own children, and the children and grandchildren of other slave owners. In this racist mentality, if you had even a drop of “colored blood,” you were identified as “colored,” regardless of parental relationship or where you fit on the perverse family tree of Southern heritage. The racist invention of the terms “white” and “black” or “colored” to indicate some delineation of human identity by skin color is deeply rooted in a prejudicial fear of “otherness”. It has no basis on any scientific classification of people groups, such as genetics, or even any distinctive cultural identity.

Beyond presumed racial traits, the cultural traditions regarding sexual identity and roles is even more central to the story of what defines us as members of a society. As sexual behavior represents something both primitive and transcendent, it often evokes our most powerful moral prescriptions and prejudices. Even racism, at least in part, is just an aspect of sexual morality, imbuing the prohibition on marrying, reproducing, or otherwise associating outside of certain tribal norms.

Whereas sexual morality defines the basic parameters of social interaction and association between males and females, it typically drives cultural norms on dress and appearance, often to foster sexual pairing. However, it may also go further, to emphasize the reproductive rights of men over women in patriarchal societies. This preoccupation with gender roles is often institutionalized in the core construction of a society’s language, mysteriously requiring every sentence to identify the sex of a subject, or the gender of an inanimate object, such as a cup or tree. This, of course, tells you more about the sexual obsession of a society than the sexual nature of a cup or tree, or one’s sexual capacity to cross the street.

However, in some pre-modern societies, the survival of the tribe could not afford gender-based role stratification. All members of the tribe hunted, farmed, and defended the tribe against outside forces. Some women were even celebrated as great warriors by being ritually sent off to the afterlife surrounded by their weaponry. The presumption that sexual identity imbues any dominant characteristics of strength, intelligence, or moral superiority upon one sex over another is a culturally bound fiction.

As so-called civilizations developed, so did roles within society, often based on prescriptions around roles within the family unit. In Western civilization, in particular, this eventually becomes the patriarchal narrative of male dominance that we all know today. Within this narrative, sexual morality is mandated to be an exclusive binary proposition. In the patriarchal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian mythologies, it is emphasized that Adam and Eve were created male and female, and the animals were created after their own kind, which is moralized to set the prescriptions of the cultural narrative on sexuality.

In a more scientific reality, sex is not inherent or binary. While biologically in order to reproduce offspring, one must have a male possessing sperm and a female with an egg, the sexual characteristics of an individual within a species is not always determinative at birth and may not fit on a narrower scale of just female and male. In the animal kingdom, some animals will actually change sex throughout their life, depending on environmental conditions and reproductive needs. While humans are characteristically gonochoric, indicating more stable sexual characteristics, they are not inherently sexually binary.

Statistically, if I go to a football game in a stadium with a hundred thousand attendees, between 20 and 50 people sitting next to me during the game will be intersex. On a planetary level, that is about 4 million people. The term intersex describes the taboo subject of the naturally occurring variations in human sexual traits outside the statistical norm and narrative. These variations may or may not have phenotypic, or observable, characteristics. Some individuals may have extra sex chromosomes, some may have both male and female genitalia, and some may have hormonal make ups that are more stereotypical of the opposite sexual phenotype.

On the field, the American Adam and Eve are represented by the football player and cheerleader—an archetype of American gender norms. The football player is the masculine ideal—a heroic, strong, virile male ever ready and willing to do battle with his adversaries. The cheerleader is the feminine ideal—the domestic, supportive, sexually desirable female who stands on the sidelines to inspire the warring men in battle.

Of course, most humans fall on a spectrum of so-called masculine and feminine traits. However, any male or female that fails to meet these idealized standards of masculinity and femininity is derided for their deficiencies. It is a prejudice so strong and predictable that it is universally capitalized on by Hollywood and advertisers to sell more goods. #sex_sells.

Across different cultures, these standards can vary as to what the ideal characteristics of a man or woman should be and may change over time or within subgroups. But the prejudicial dynamics of exclusion, censure, and control remain the same in enforcing these social norms. These biased narratives create a blindness to the reality and truth of the complexity and diversity of human experiences, both for oneself and for others.

The dynamic of prejudice and bigotry develops out of a judgment of others based upon some imagined ideal, myth, or standard outside oneself rather than on any actual quality or capability presented in the moment, or by any individual. Thus, for example, the belief that men are stronger than women is evoked because the ideal football player is stronger than the cheerleader standing on the sidelines. The elite female athlete, whether sprinter, shot-putter, or weightlifter, is deficient in comparison to the ideal standard of a cheerleader and therefore cannot represent the relative strength of a woman to a man, or just between human beings.

Ergo, I, as a man, feel that I am stronger and consequently superior to all women, because I identify with the ideal Man, even if I can barely bend over to tie my shoelaces. From this perch, I also feel qualified to personally judge the value and worth of any female I encounter. If I believe a woman is less sexually desirable to myself, whether due to aging or natural variations on the placement of eyes, nose, or chin, then, correspondingly, I deem that this subpar female has less value and is deserving of my attacks on her deficiencies. This, of course, is the law of the internet and the pub, which empowers me to publically enforce societal norms and values as I see them.

Unfortunately, these dominant narratives may at times become the accepted norms of their victims. The common practice of a woman greeting another woman or responding to another woman who feels devalued and depressed by telling her she is “beautiful” reinforces the belief that the central criteria of her valuation is her appearance, rather than stepping back to change the narrative by celebrating her true value based on strength of character—intelligence, honesty, goodness, or capability. When a darker skinned person accepts that skin tone is the basis for their identity or worth, they reinforce the “colored” narrative of the American and European racists of what it means to be included in society, rather than stepping back to change the narrative by celebrating their true value based on strength of character—intelligence, honesty, goodness, or capability. This was essentially what Gandhi, and then Martin Luther King, proposed—changing the narrative of value and worth to be about fundamental human character and dignity rather than conformity to the stereotypical standards of a racist and sexist society.

Classism, authoritarianism, racism, tribalism, nationalism, colonialism, religiosity, moralism, sexism, and egotism all represent different narratives of the belief in the superiority of one person, group, or ideology over another. They represent different criteria on which I may associate my identity and worth, apart from my personal abilities and characteristics. My individual strengths and weaknesses are no longer who I am. I am powerful because I am given a role, or belong to a group that I believe is powerful. Or else, I may esteem my value based on a celebrated authority figure who I identify as powerful or valuable. I may be a lousy baseball player or politically very weak, but if my sports team or political party wins, I projectively feel powerful and worthwhile.

The term conservative is used widely to describe political parties and policies; however, it is psychologically founded in the visceral reaction to a threat one feels to their perceived identity, safety, or circumstance, founded in a belief that power is scarce, reserved, and hierarchical. This, then motivates one to act out of fear to conserve the power or privilege of one’s own person, group, or tradition over another. The flimsy rationale of this hierarchical construct based on fear is fundamentally at odds with reality, and thus, rife with insecurities. It requires a great deal of time and energy, constant reinforcement and defensiveness, violence and suppression of outside views, to maintain the illusion of physical or moral superiority over another group, class, person, or team.

At the dawn of the American Civil Rights movement in the middle of the 20^th century, Martin Luther King laid out a shared dream for a human family living together with love and respect:

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today…

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

King’s vision of freedom for all humanity became a rallying cry against oppression and exclusion, against those who seek to exert undue control over others for any reason, but in particular, against the racist powers within American politics and society. The speech was made only two months before President and civil rights advocate, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Five years later, King’s peaceful civil rights advocacy for equal treatment of the Negro before the law led to his own assassination. Two months later, prominent civil rights advocate and presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy was also assassinated.

Today, White Identity movements in America and across the globe continue to fight against King’s Dream. While King himself was a protestant minister, today evangelical Christianity has become one of the largest movements to embrace the White Nationalist vision for the racial superiority of the so-called white race in politics, religion, and society, reimagining themselves as the new Civil Rights movement to surreptitiously preserve White Rights and Identity. Pastor George would most certainly be proud of his spiritual progeny carrying on the fight for Christian White Supremacy into the 21^st century.

On the other hand, in King’s Dream, all of God's children, Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholic join hands and sing, “we are free at last.” King invokes the foundational narrative of the Torah mythology, that we are all God’s children, regardless or inclusive, of our feeble identification as Black, White, Jew, Gentile, Protestant, or Catholic.

Each of us constructs our identity as a human being in layers based on cultural, personal, and universal principles. At the base, most immature level are Cultural norms that define tribal identity and the rules of participation. On one hand, the rules of participation may be benign, defining what it means to be a good neighbor, how to be a pro golfer, or to be a member in good standing of some club or association. But then, the cultural mythology may also lay out an exclusionary narrative of who is in and who is out of the dominant moral framework or group, which then results in subgroups of those who are excluded.

The dominant Euro-American racial mythos evokes a narrative of manifest destiny, exploitative economics, and god’s privilege and blessings upon the White Christian race. This mythos establishes the supremacy of White culture over all other immigrant cultures and indigenous groups leading up to the current times. However, as White is a made up concept, it has historically struggled to define what is the White race? Are the Irish white? What about Catholics, Muslims, or Jews? What if one of your parents or grandparents are “colored” but your skin tone is “white”? All of these classifications of people were excluded from the White mythos at some point in history, and some even today.

In the patriarchal mythos of male supremacy, the female is objectified. Her primary role is to be subservient to the dominant male. She is the receptor of a man’s sperm, to reproduce in his image. She must always appear sexually attractive to the male gaze, whether the man is a mate, a stranger, or just a business associate. She is a servant in all aspects of life. Men hold power and authority over the inferior race of women in marriage, religion, politics, and society.

In religious sectarianism, my faith is superior to all others because god has chosen to reveal his truth to me. I have authority because I am obedient to his authority. It is my duty and calling to battle inferior and heretical religious beliefs, even when I may share some primary moralistic tenets. I am a Christian—but not like those Christians. I am a Jew—but not like those Jews. I am a Muslim—but not like those Muslims. My god is superior to yours and angrier. Thus, I must subjugate all of society to his will to validate the truth that he has revealed to me personally and through his prophets.

These dominant narratives then lead to the development of minority groups in reaction to these exclusionary mythos regarding race, religion, gender, sexual attraction, sexual traits, or even musical tastes. While this unfortunately divides humanity further, it also compensates for the prejudicial attitudes of the dominant group by empowering the disenfranchised peoples, helping them to survive in a hostile world. Over time, even the most arbitrary subgroup will then develop its own exclusionary cultural mythos.

The next developmental level of identity formation is founded in my personal mythology that defines who I am in relationship to others. This evolves out of the semantics of the cultural mythos, establishing a dialogue between my personal experience, my perceived traits, and the larger social narratives of class, race, nationality, privilege, and disposition. While the cultural mythos is about exclusion, defining how others may see me or exclude me, my personal mythos is about inclusion, defining what classifications or groups I self-identify with—do I see myself as Black, White, Jew, Gentile, Protestant, or Catholic, whether or not others do?

The highest developmental level of identity formation is founded in a universal mythology, which defines constitutionally who I am with respect to our common humanity by way of shared genetics or family history. However, this advanced level of moral development is often overshadowed or negated by the fears and cultural prejudices of those who are narrowly bound by their egotistic or ethnocentric identity.

In King’s Dream, the universal mythology is founded in a shared identity as “all god’s children.” This is an inclusive classification for humanity founded in an initial narrative of Yahweh as the parent of his first children, Eve and Adam, who then become the ancestors of all humanity through the Generations of Noah outlined in the Table of Nations. This by purpose and intent includes everyone on the planet throughout all history.  In contradiction to this, many moralistic Christian sects redefine this core narrative to identify a “child of god” as only those who qualify by the specific rules of salvation prescribed by their group’s theology.  However, according to the actual Torah mythology that underlies Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as invoked by Pastor King, we are all god’s children. Humans are all related—we are family—deserving love and respect.

Scientifically, in the genetic anthology of Homo sapiens, we all descend from an African Eve. Our early ancestors were a curious and adventurous lot who were determined to blaze new paths, to travel the world. Unfortunately there were no cars, roads, or cruise ships, so they had to walk, often taking years or even generations to get somewhere else.

While some of our ancestors did stay on the African continent, others traveled northeast into the fertile crescent of Western Asia. Then some migrated along the coast of the Indian Ocean. Eventually, some ended up as far away as Australia and the Pacific Islands. Others migrated north into the Asian steppes, then across the Pacific by either the Bering land bridge or by boat, moving further down the coast into South America and across the North American continent. At the end of the European Ice Age, groups of our ancestors moved out of Western Asia into the European continent where they encountered and occasionally interbred with their close cousins the Neanderthals creating a mixed genetic heritage for many European tribal groups. Some groups migrated back and forth across Asia, occasionally interbreeding with another close cousin, the Denosivans.

A major genetic variation within the human family tree is called a haplotype. Given the mobility and horniness of our ancestors some of these haplotypes are not regional but are distributed across both the Asian and European continents. This diverse genetic history contradicts numerous racial theories proposed before the advent of genetic anthropology, which attempted to support White Supremacy doctrines through racial phrenology or by invoking a mythic Aryan race of pure blooded Caucasians. To the contrary, according to current genetic research, humans are all related—we are family—thus, deserving love and respect.

All humans have a heart, a brain, the nerves, as well as lungs and digestive organs, without which human life is not possible. These same life sustaining organs also keep dogs and frogs and even worms alive. We share a great deal of genetic morphology with the entirety of the animal kingdom. However, Homo sapiens as a species are genetically nearly-identical, with only very small sub variants that bestow unique eyes, nose, chin, height, hair and skin color based on evolutionary pressures and inherited family traits.

Scientifically, race is an outdated fiction and, in particular, there are no separate genetic branches of the human family tree for males and females—no men from Mars or women from Venus. The same sex organs that become testes in male development become ovaries in female development—and a small number of humans end up with both. Contrary to the dominant narrative, sex and race do not define what it is to be a human being. For those who are not familiar, women have given birth to both male and female children in an unbroken chain going back to our common ancestral mother in Africa, or else the creation of the mythic Eve, however you wish to frame it.

There is beauty in our narrow differences that give us a sense of individuality. And part of this social experiment called life is to find the innate excellence in everyone. Social norms can help us to function day to day but when they are based on erroneous assumptions or are too restrictive or prescriptive, they become harmful. They also are harmful when they become exclusionary, failing to recognize our mutual value, connection, and heritage in the human family.

Ultimately, it is the fear of our differences that forges the bitter bonds of hatred, animosity, division, and separation. The Dream of Dr. King invites us to embrace our minor differences, to rise above ignorance, suspicion, and superficial judgment of others based on outward appearances. He urges us to see ourselves in one another, acknowledging that our differences are not so different, by committing ourselves to the prospect that all humans are created with equal value.  He invokes the ancient mythology of the Universal Family, in parallel with our genetic history, as the foundation of a new society built on love and respect, establishing a deeper meaning and purpose for human relationships.

And hopefully, when this happens—when we all dream of one another as family, as valued brothers and sisters, descendants of the same ancient mother from long ago—we will be freed from the shackles of fear and strife; thus, letting true freedom develop out of our shared identity and destiny as earthlings, living together in peace, love, and understanding, as we hurl through a vast, cold, dark universe, holding on to this beautiful rock we share, called Earth.