It is natural behavior for animals to be concerned with their status or position in relation to other animals in the pack. In the wild the survival value of this jockeying for position is more obvious. An animal maintains the dominant position in relation to his ability to defend himself from attack. His ability to defend himself is known to be a reflection of his ability to provide food or ensure access to a food source.
It's not that different with human beings, although our perceptions of threatening situations have more to do with egos and self images, and less frequently to do with physical threats or danger. Actually, our egos are one of the most likely causes for us to encounter life threatening danger. Too often attempts to defend position become tragic encounters. Fortunately, most are comical if we can see them that way.
"This is alleged to be the transcript of an ACTUAL radio conversation of a U.S. Naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in Oct., 1995. (Radio conversation released by Chief of Naval Ops 10/10/95.)
Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER U.S.S. LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
What would happen to us if we let go of our position? Patriotism comes from a desire for security. A patriot seeks a good position for her country. Unfortunately, this usually involves seeking to achieve or maintain a dominant position.
Patriotism asks for allegiance to one group over all others for the purpose of survival. This tends to encourage pack mentality.
When we remember that all of us have in common, needs for survival, security, and order, then we can begin to have compassion for each other. Then we can become creative in finding alternative means to achieve security.
There is no need to make the phenomena of patriotism as anything other than what it is. We don't need to elevate patriotism as if it expressed a lofty stage moral development. Neither is it necessary to denigrate patriotism or imply that it is inherently evil.
Although not immediately obvious the consideration of patriotism is a fitting religious task. World religious traditions have regularly encouraged people to reflect upon their identity, and to gain an understanding of our relationship to something far greater than our individual life stories. Some but not all religious traditions place human beings in relation to a deity believed to be removed from nature. Like Eastern or indigenous religious traditions, we are more likely to seek the Ultimate or transcendent within the natural world. Our tradition draws upon science and most particularly evolution to help us develop our religious world views.
Science can help us to understand and have compassion for patriotism. Science teaches us that there are different parts of the brain that correspond to the order of their evolutionary development. The base of our brain stem is sometimes called the "lizard brain" or reptilian brain. We need it and it serves its purpose. When it becomes urgent for us to get air or water, we don't need poetry or an intellectual discussion of the nature of existence. We need to move. We are also blessed with higher functioning that is linked to parts of our brain that are a result of more recent evolution. Many of our human qualities arise from the functioning of our prefrontal cortex. When we are commanded by the base impulses of our early or lizard brain, during situations that call for higher intelligence, we end up in a real mess. Just look at how our country's executive decisions for the past 8 years have played out in our foreign relations, our economy and our environment.
To take a kinder view of patriotism, let's consider what happens in basketball season. There is a mass frenzy of "Spurs" flag waving, and we are united in support for our team. "You've got to root, root, root for the home team!" Sometimes the mob hysteria of victory celebrations erupt into violence. Otherwise, basketball industry sponsored "patriotism" seems benign.
The same can not be said of patriotism promoted by the war industry. Flags are used to whoop up a spirit of patriotism in order to prepare people to go to war. When people start waving flags the period of critical examination ends. Hawks ask "whose side are you on?" as they rally us to war. You are either with us or against us," said our commander in chief. Patriotism becomes seen as a reason to limit discussion. Dissent is said to be traitorous and dangerous. Attention goes to find reasons to justify war.
Then there is a mad dash for home base. We want to be on the winning team. We know what is about to happen to anyone who is not on "our" team. Patriotism is based on a need for belonging. At best it helps us to act like an immune system that protects against a foreign invader. At worse we imagine that we are in danger, and fear leads to violence and injustice. Patriotism gets in the way of much needed reflection. We don't consider the outcomes thoroughly, and it becomes hard to care about those we call our enemies. And with our sites set on the enemy "out there," we fail to notice that public store is being pillaged from within.
We U Us have a proud tradition of another kind of patriotism. For almost 250 years, we have been some of the strongest supporters of the United States. We have made great contributions to this nation, without forgetting the need for critical examination. We have carried the torch of freedom by holding the right of conscience as sacred. We have insisted that our patriotism, our love for America would not allow us to lose our connection, love and concern for all of humanity.
Understanding patriotism as fulfilling a need for belonging, I think back to my childhood. Because of brotherly love, I developed a sense of belonging. Later in high school, I experienced brother and sisterhood in the Jewish community. I found this in a network of youth groups, consisting of BBG girls and AZA boys. Several towns in Northern NJ had their own chapters of AZA and BBG. As teenagers, we learned to organize our own events; dances, socials, inter-mural sports and forensic competitions. There was a love and appreciation of all the chapters that made up our network, lending us a sense of belonging to an extended community. I imagine its not entirely different from our UU youth network, known as YRUU. When I went to college, I again quickly joined a fraternity. This was quite different from the network of Jewish youth groups. Because I was a hippie, a liberal and a Universalist, many of my friends had trouble understanding how I could be in a "frat." Fraternity meant something different to them than to me. There was beauty, love and life that connected the 50 of us young "brothers." When classes ended we didn't go to the dorm, we went home to "our" house. We had responsibility, freedom and the ability to choose our own way. And we choose to be together. Together we could afford rock band parties and kegs of beer. The environment was far more welcoming than my high school, but not so open as AZA and BBG. I was terribly disappointed and bewildered to find an "us and them" mentality in the so called "Greek system." Instead of spreading the blessing of our association, we locked the doors to keep it to ourselves. I didn't understand why life in the fraternity didn't lead to a greater appreciation of cooperation and welcoming beyond our doors.
I witnessed the small mindedness that fraternities and sororities are known for. I witnessed hazing, cruelty, and abuse. I saw the brotherly love turn into brutal sexism. Instead of building bridges, we built walls.
Patriotism is like fraternity pride. Too often it leads to contempt of foreigners. I grieve when we come close ranks and abandon hopes for social progress. I grieve the ugliness that grows and the beauty that dies when we lose our connection and turn away from the humanity we share with the entire human race.
Heeding Jack Kennedy's advice, I found it more useful to turn my "whys?" into "why nots?." From the fraternity I ventured and found communities that demonstrated mindfulness of the interdependent relationship of all humanity and all life. There was a network of people working to end apartheid, another for nuclear disarmament, there has been cultural creative networks, interfaith and progressive religious communities, including our own beloved religious movement. All these have had in common, a commitment to demonstrate a healing alternative to oppressive cultural practices. All have contained a vision and a promise of a new way of relating to each other and to life. After knowing the sweetness of interconnectedness, why would I settle for us vs them, even if could be on the #1team?
I take little credit for the treasures I have found. I was born and rooted firmly in a tradition of optimists and idealists. Although I frequently point out oppressive aspects of our culture, there is a spirit that has grown in this country that is transforming us toward liberation and a spiritual understanding of life.
We have come a long way, but there is a long way to go. The culture that we exist in has been dominated by European empires. It has been a world order based upon domination. Our society has not primarily grown from the wisdom of indigenous peoples. No, we are inheritors of conquistadors who perpetuated a near genocide of the native peoples of this continent. We are inheritors of an empire built upon the barbarous slave trade. We are inheritors of empires built upon exploitation of this land and all its people. That's a lot of trauma that shapes our society, and it needs healing.
And still I see the beauty in the patterns of life. This country is built upon courageous men and women who fled persecution in foreign lands. That the persecution was repeated is nothing new. What is amazing is that something else took root in the fertile soil of this continent. It was written into the declaration of independence, the constitution and the bill of rights. Please do not dismiss the power of the establishment of these ideals. True, politics has always been a story of hypocrisy, of grand and noble speeches and backroom deals that ensure bloodshed and oppression.
But the dream of a nation where all would know freedom, justice and liberty has been a powerful force on this continent and in our world. Dr. King was not the first to speak of this dream. His genius was in calling this nation to remember and once again renew its effort to live out its creed.
This is the patriotism fostered by our religious movement. People like Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, Theodore Parker, Susan B. Anthony, Julie Ward Howe, Louisa May Alcott, John Haynes Holmes, James Reeb, are a small slice of the people who inspired generations with words and deeds that proclaimed the dignity of our humanity, and the call to work toward a society where justice, kindness and an awareness of our interconnectedness would be a reality.
This is what we do here. We hold on to a healing and transformative vision. We remind each other of what is most sacred. We nourish each other, affirming the beauty of humanity, the beauty of creation. We call each other to realize, which is to say make real the ideals that enrich our lives and allow us to experience them as meaningful. We call each other to remember and to discover who we are in a deeper way.
We do not denigrate nature, by calling selfish the desire to survive. We simply remind each other that there is something more beautiful and powerful than our fear. We ask each other to question and explore and probe deeper into the truth of our existence.
Some call ours a secular endeavor... and we are certainly enriched by the wisdom of humanist traditions. However there are plenty of people like myself who call us to remember that we did not create the Earth, and that we are blessed when we recognize and give homage to something inexpressibly larger than us. We are part of the web of life, and there are forces upon us that have led to great healing, mystery and miracle.
And there are those who would like to say that ours is a Christian nation. And our nation, our civilization is certainly enriched by the powerful call of Jesus. But as I said of Dr. King, the dream existed long before a Christian religious identity was formed. It was the vision that led the Jewish people out of slavery. It was the vision of the prophets.
It is a vision that was written into the foundations of our nation, a nation that prohibits the establishment of any particular religion, but allows for the freedom of each man and woman to seek religious truth and meaning in his and her own way. It is a vision that demands not complacency and certainly not blind obedience to established order, but a vision that demands that each generation take up the struggle for justice and equality. This is the patriotism that we promote. We call each other to remember that truth awaits us, that revelation is not sealed. We call each other to humility in recognition of our place in relation to an amazing and mysterious interdependent web of existence. We exist together, as a religious community in order to affirm that God or the Ultimate Reality is greater than we yet know.
We exist to remember the revelation written in Hebrew scriptures where God revealed herself, itself or godself as I am that I am, and I am what I am becoming. Whatever you think or feel about that scripture, we hold sacred that there is an ultimate beauty and worth already existing inside us and inside our country. We also hold that life is change, and something more beautiful can unfold with our participation.
Just as our congregations have created a covenant that asks us to give each other acceptance but also encouragement to spiritual growth, we shall love our country, and we will ask it to live up to its creed. We are patriots who love our country so much that we will not allow it to forget that it too is part of something greater. We love our country so much that we will not give up faith in what it claims to stand for. We love our country so much that we will take it as it is, and we will do our part to see it thrive for a greater tomorrow.
SO be it.