The idea of strangers

1. What misconception is the host planning to clear up for once and for all? I wrote: who is the host? What is the misconception? We are all imperfect receivers, each interpreting, and navigating reality as best we can. There’s so much to choose from. Where do you even begin? Racial injustice?

But on this day of Passover, it’s clear that every single group of people and cultures has been oppressed by, or has oppressed another. Take the idea of naming people by their nationalities. The Welsh, for example, an exogamic name given by outsiders. Why would anyone want to self-identify as strangers or foreigners? That’s what the word means.

The name tells us that the Welsh were named by outsiders in their own land, and the land they lost to outsiders and they were being oppressed, denied their own name for themselves, Cymru. This holds true for native tribes of the Americas as well. The word Anasazi, meaning stranger in Navajo or enemy and so on.

2. What does the host admit was hard to overcome? We live in an us versus them culture, where every stranger represents danger from the outside. No one single culture is exempt from this practice. Sure, we can sing, all we are saying is give peace, a chance, but, bottom line, when threatened, we close our doors quickly at the first sign of danger.

Look at what happened during the pandemic. It was worldwide free for all. Everyone was out for themselves. And look where that got us. Hoarding toilet paper and massive shortages of disinfectants and other oddities as people locked down and hunkered in, and not their neighbors. In a just world this should never have happened, but it did. And no one is willing to admit that no one is in charge, and we’re all at fault. We’re all to blame, for a moment we let go of our humanity.

3. Every group, every culture has been subjugated with pressure from the outside, whether by war, or assignation. Every group has put labels on strangers defining them as enemies. This is the way of things. It’s hard to admit, but there you have it in a nutshell.

The prefix, wall, as in walnut, wall, and even the name Walsh means, foreigner or stranger. The Welsh would not have named themselves, thusly.

We need to begin by not holding onto the past, or our heritage. There is always one grudge or another to bury us unto the next century. Look at Nagasaki. Something is always at the ready to distract us and derail us.

If only we all knew that, then the world would be a much better place. But even the pandemic didn’t help, we witnessed that from the ground up.

4/6/23

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