Proximity

The Medicine We Need

Many problems are not resolved simply due to lack of proximity.  We often just can’t care as much...from a distance.

We have a car wash in our town that was recently purchased by an international organization that manages such businesses. Before the purchase, the car wash was kind of a crown-jewel in the area, for a variety of reasons. But, after the purchase, there is nearly unanimous opinion that 'things have changed' (and not for the better). It has gone downhill, as people say. Many of the same services still exist. But, the maintenance and care for the services seems spotty at best.  It smells of a kind of distance that those in charge have from the details.  In other words, it looks like the people who should care, don’t — because they don’t know about how the details are creating the problems that people are frustrated with. I asked one of the attendants how things were going with the new owner and he observed that he wishes the place was still the name of the old car wash (which they had to change). To prove the point, it isn’t just the market that is making observations about the changing value of the car wash. The very employees are as well (as they always are).

Banks are often another example. Across the nation, we have local banks as part of financial organizations, and we have national ones.  And, many times you’ll hear something similar to the report of the car wash attendant. That whatever the challenges are for the local people, the national concerns seem to prevail in terms of priority. And so people will laughing say something like "well, you get what you get I guess — it’s not people around here or making the decisions". 

This seems to play itself out in the current political divide in our country as well. And the dynamic again seems a little conspicuous, in the sense that what any one group thinks (especially about the other group) seems to be largely a result of very little constructive and human interaction between the two groups. We don’t see other people for who they are; we see our people.  We even gather with our people, because we’re not those people. There is something about an almost institutional dynamic that develops around itself. In order to continue the maintenance of "us", we have to be talking about “them". And this very easily gets sophisticated enough that it is quite obviously becomes an us-them scenario at all kinds of levels. 

A lot of this, it seems to me, has to do with proximity. A local radio station recently started a new initiative (One Small Step) where they try to find two people from different ideologies to sit down and talk to one another — not about politics, but about each other...as fellow human beings. Listening to another person, besides learning about what is important to them, is also an opportunity to learn about what is important to me and maybe a little bit about why.  And, if that is identified to some degree at all, it can obviously open up the possibility that there may be some legitimate reasons for why other things are important to other people. One of the latent psychological goals of this kind of organized encounter, I suspect, is to allow for the human connection that can occur when people are actually closer (in proximity) to each other.

When we lose our collective sensitivity to the dynamics and needs of people (similar, or not) as human beings, we lose a lot more than we think. Because once I am able to no longer see you, especially if you’re different, as a human being (as opposed to some kind of label that an institution I’m connected to has created for you or your group of people), it is not that slippery of a slope to imagine not only how I think about you, but how I treat you. History is certainly a reporter on this dynamic and seems to repeat itself throughout the human condition. The basis of growth of the human factors resulting in the more recent world wars, not to mention the more historical crusades, is pretty easy proof of this quite observable dynamic. It’s not hard to feel a similar dynamic being perpetuated right now in the environment that we’re in. When institutionalized concepts develop so far as to be primarily used as a wedge, or as leverage against other human beings, we should take notice.  

I have to wonder if proximity is not an antidote to this kind of sickness. While perhaps not the actual cure, I do think it enables the availability of a cure. In the end, humanity can only be truly prosperous (actually, can only truly survive) if it understands and employs the intrinsic ideologies of love. At the end of the day, I’m not sure how far one can go in the absence of love. And, though exceptions do occur, it is not hard to recognize that love is difficult to pull off from a distance. Because of the nature and degree of intensity that love participates in, it is that physical rubbing up against one another that creates the context for the power and beauty of love to occur. 

From the Biblical narratives, it is pretty observable that God did not stand at the distance of heaven and yell at creation about how they were treating it. God could have, I suppose. But the genius of the Biblical story is that the power of what is God is not really anything, especially in the creator / creature arrangement, if it’s not about love.  And so, rather than yelling from far away, we have God incarnating Godself to creation — up close and personal (and, by the way, vulnerable as well). Because God seems to know that it’s love and proximity that can make a difference. Yes, it can be rejected, but that is quite a hill to fully and finally reach when the body of knowledge and experience of it is as great as it is. 

Obviously, another quite observable thing is that when damage in this respect has occurred, it is very difficult to comprehend the ideology of love because of the experience against which it lays. But, even then, there is ample evidence that it is possible for the worst damage to still be overcome by love.

There is a song sung within some Christian traditions that includes the phrase, "They will know we are Christians by our love". This has to be more than just between us and our friends. The whole endgame described in the Biblical texts is that everyone is to be included.  From famous verses like John 3:16 through the whole disruption that Jesus created, the idea it seems that God is after was to include everyone (not just my tribe) in the deal. So, the question I really have to proceed with asking, especially in the context of religion is, how am I and my group participating in the advancement of love for everyone?  And, if my religion simply becomes an echo-chamber designed to create and perpetuate distance with other people (that the Bible even claims Jesus died for), that religion has moved quite a distance from God. In fact, it is difficult to quite imagine how it is trusting in God at all.  It cannot legitimately claim (not to mention act) it is in accordance with the ideals of what is important to God.

All of this to say, in order for us to be fully human (and, in that sense, express the divinity that God has put within each of us), we must be a participating part of the kind of health that runs on the energy of love for one another (everyone).  And, the medicine that delivers that love is...proximity (both physically and in spirit) because we are, after all, all sharing in a common thing (not a separated — us / them — thing).