Diversity and Tolerance

Mark Twain wrote that "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” Twain went on to say that “broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

I understand the frustrated idealism in the statement, but I think perhaps that the operative word here may be “vegetating.” My grandfather, born in 1886, never traveled outside the Southeast, never owned an automobile or even a television, but never was there a more charitable or tolerant individual. He never “vegetated.” He observed human behavior; he read voraciously; he prayed constantly and he died peacefully at the age of 98. He was, perhaps, exceptional in his egalitarian views.

Americans have for generations taken pride in being a great “melting pot” of cultures, and nowhere on earth has travel been more ubiquitous than in the United States. Travel is central to our national identity, our perception of freedom and independence and in some cases our very sense of self. Yet a generation after the great civil rights struggles of the 1960’s, prejudice persists and we are a nation divided by race, ethnicity, politics and religion; this, despite the efforts of mass media to frame every situation and every comedy as a happy mixture of every race, color, creed and national origin that can fit on a screen.

As for the “melting pot,” a recent study based on census data and posted on the Radical Cartography website illustrates the extreme racial and ethnic segregation that persists in our largest cities. With the ability to live anywhere we choose, we choose to live among our “own kind,” and humankind is not enough of a distinction for many of us.

Mark Twain hoped that if Americans exposed themselves to different cultures that they would recognize the humanity which joins us all. Yet travel in and of itself does not seem to fulfill his wish. The British Empire at one point in history circled the globe and yet many of the people who lived within the “empire” were considered by the British to be subhuman – not a particularly charitable view. Africans who traveled halfway around the world to America did not consider life on the plantation to be wholesome and their owners, when they were exposed to a foreign culture, attempted to eradicate it.

Prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness display the ability to survive travel and exposure to other cultures. Decades after the desegregation of our schools they appear capable of withstanding even education. These debilitations of the human spirit seem to be hardwired into the animal side of human nature. Genetically identical animals form groups, develop identities separate from their neighbors and compete with each other for territory and resources. This is true of a hive of bees, a pack of wolves, a pride of lions or a herd of elephants.

Is this not also true of humans? Several studies have shown that the human mind is incapable of comprehending more than about 150 meaningful relationships. People outside this group have a tendency to be perceived as “the other, “no matter how similar they may be to us. Perhaps this is the determining factor in our astounding ability to create divisions among ourselves. Combine our hardwired perceptual limitations with fear of “the other,” and you have the history of the human race in a nutshell.

I’m still inspired by Mark Twain’s hope for “broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things.” As well as being capable of division, humanity has used religion, education and compassion to overcome the limitations of the human animal. For many it is not the perception of the other but the fear of the other that is the root of the problem and for many, travel provides the opportunity to overcome that fear. For others it is the spiritual journey or the travels of the educated and inquiring mind.

Perhaps there is a cautionary tale to be found in the structure of the human brain. A hundred and fifty individuals is about the size of a small tribe or a clan. Perhaps we achieved the optimum organizational unit for human beings generations ago - and while nations and empires have erased the natural boundaries of the community, we have invented divisions to replace them. While there seems to be little chance of an orderly retreat from the homogenization of cultures, it would behoove us to remember the plagues and infestations endured by the natural world that was brought on by our industrial practice of monoculture. In the final analysis, perhaps our best hope for survival is to be found in a twofold approach: by encouraging diversity and, above all, by teaching tolerance.