Exceptional Bullshit – Beyond the Entitlement of Birth, in Search of the Heart of Democracy

It dawned on me this summer, after watching “The Imitation Game“, why the whole idea of American Exceptionalism is bullshit. Exceptionalism belongs to all of humanity. Americans, like everyone else in the world, have to demonstrate exceptionalism, one soul at time, one choice at a time. Damn it, I’m going to have to work for it!

I’m an American woman. No design or innate superiority/inferiority was at play in my birth, simply my Mother was in America when her water broke. I entered this world on a piece of ground no better or worse than another. Earth is Earth is Earth everywhere. I landed, that’s good enough for me.

My parents were white, so I am too. Although if I am to believe the ads for genetic mapping now available to the public, I wouldn’t be surprised to find my genetic heritage is more multihued than simple ‘white’. Cool! Expanded potential to relate to another human…maybe.

I was born one of the only two choices of gender available to our species. These 3 facts of birth mean absolutely nothing… until, like a magnet with iron filings, I attract/choose all sorts of meanings about me because of my nationality, ethnicity and gender. (Nationality, ethnicity and gender; three big inescapable hinges upon which we decide who we are…obviously religion can be a huge device of division/identity, but deserves its own rant.)

And how could I not take on and become the beliefs swirling around and through me??? The woman I suckled from had beliefs flowing through her mind and heart, just as the woman she had suckled from. And the world was infinitely smaller in grandma’s day, so were her beliefs. The air around me was filled with the conversations, arguments, petty hurts, hidden jealousies and monumental lies that fill all our lives. We each come into a soup that used to be easier to digest. Not now; we’re daily challenged with instant, huge global contradictions. Our many pasts, feared futures, a murmured opinion on the other side of the world, a sideways glance, a toy gun mistaken, collide instantly rippling out/invading our consciousness. Control? We’re way past that, with the future hurtling toward us.

It came clear to me as I pulled weeds in the garden, all the while talking to my helpmate. She’s younger than me, so the implicit right of ageism means I tell her stuff about the world. I rambled on about how we Americans came back from the second World War with a sense of ‘right’ unparalleled. We’d clearly won against ‘evil’! Born in the 50’s, I remember growing up in that air. The American way had prevailed. It had ‘Right’, ‘Might’ and it was innate. Must be our democracy, that idea that each individual voice counted and our government represented the will and voice of the people. We won against evil so America and Americans were GOOD. Simple, clear, clean, right, perfect.

Bullshit. During the last 70 years, the world has exploded with awarenesses, complications, contradictions, knowledges and lies. The field of competition now global and the naive but heartfelt sense of ‘good’ of America in the 50’s has morphed into the cudgel of ‘exceptionalism’ that has slithered in to take the place of the responsibility of real morality. After all, it is easier in the face of a multiple choice reality that questions our meaning and value daily. Easier to believe that the fact I was born white in American is enough. Try to go back to sleep. Yeah, try.

So, the fact that the Allies actually won the war because of cool, logical mathematical calculations, as revealed in “The Imitation Game“, was in the words of my generation ‘Mind Blowing’. We’re not innately GOOD, simply capable of calculating. Don’t get me wrong; many, many rose and were in the moment of choice brave, heroic, exceptional in the World War. They fought on all sides and the choice to rise and meet the moment – then as now – is as solo, solitary and individual as each of us. Exceptionalism is not innate to country, ethnicity or gender. Courage does not pass down through genetics or bequeathed by a passport; it is found in the soul and the heart of the individual.

Today, waves of realization are crashing all around us. We are all facing changes and challenges at once so monumental and intimately personal that the old bulwarks of identity no longer work. Where I was born, doesn’t matter. Ethnicity is but a color swatch with no meaning beyond what we give it. And now even gender can be changed. Reality is forcing us to stand naked in the sight of…each other. Naked and as vulnerable as we each, vulnerable as we all…ALL…ALL are. Human. Earthly Human by birth. And that is enough, isn’t it?

Each voice does count. We are each good enough to have the responsibility of choice...the choice to be or not to be, exceptional. Isn’t that really at the heart of democracy? Opportunities abound in these times of change. Can we rise to the moment and be human? These days being human, really human, has become a rare act of exceptionalism. As always, it is up to us. Awesome isn’t it?

No matter gender, no matter color, no matter where on the earth, under what set of beliefs we arrive. We are each part of the Human Race.

Peace Begins with Enough for All.

www.PeaceGenesisProject.org