Thought for the Week: In the face of the other
Harvey Gillman reflects on ‘the face of the other’
Some years ago, I read an article about the growth of extreme nationalism in the south-west of England. This was manifested in antisemitic behaviour and actions. Yet the south-west of England is an area of low Jewish population. Recently, in an analysis of voting in the EU referendum, it was noticed that the areas with the highest votes for the leave campaign, with one or two exceptions, were in areas where there were fewest immigrants. There were many diverse reasons why people voted in the way they did, so I do not wish to be simplistic in equating ‘leave’ with xenophobia, but these phenomena do give me pause for thought.
I have long believed, as a result of my own experience, that change comes about when human beings meet each other as people rather than as categories. I wonder whether the desire to categorise other people – that is not to see them as individuals but as members of groups – is a way of trying to reduce complexity in a perplexing, fast-changing world, a world which seems ever more bewildering, and hence frightening to any sense of stability.
Categorisation of the ‘other’ leads to stereotyping. Stereotyping leads to rejection, to a belittling of the humanity of the other. It is easy for people seeking power to play on these fears and to use the challenge of the unknown as an opportunity to provide simple solutions, which are no solution at all.
Closed communities tend to define themselves by what they are not and by an imagined and reinvented shared history. And yet the idea of a closed community is itself a myth. The flora and fauna and population of the British Isles is largely a result of immigration. Christianity itself is an immigrant religion. We are all on the move, whether we like it or not.
My whole life has been a rejection of the stereotype. When I was visited for membership in the mid-seventies I mentioned that I was living with another man, and I heard many years later that this fact was a ‘stop’ in the mind of one of my visitors. When I gave my coming-out Swarthmore Lecture in 1988 I was accused by one eminent Friend of washing my dirty linen in public (that is, I announced I was gay). But Friends have changed because human beings have witnessed to their own authenticity and have seen each other as individuals. I am not all Jews. I am not all gays. And, as Friends will know, I am not all Quakers. I refuse all categorisations. Even as an extrovert I have my introverted moments! The individual human challenges the individual human. There are many ways of being human and that diversity is what we all have in common.
I have often quoted Emmanuel Levinas, the twentieth-century Jewish philosopher. One of his most profound insights is that we find God in the ‘face of the other’ – precisely because each face is different. I would add that we can transcend difference to find unity, but the individual is manifested through difference. To ignore this is to dishonour the uniqueness of the divine in each person.
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