People Need Enemies

The picture above is from the Twilight Zone episode: “Monsters on Maple Street”. It’s Rod Serling’s statement about how easily we can be turned against each other, about how we are wired to look for “the enemy” and kick into a higher, perhaps more primal and satisfying, gear when we spot them.  We get a strange comfort in having a villain. We suddenly have clarity of purpose. Believing in “us against them” is somehow so empowering and strangely comforting that we just can’t resist creating “us” and looking for “them”.

   One of my favorite short stories is Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”.  She said a mouthful when she had “the misfit” say,  

“She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody  there to shoot her every minute of her life”.  

He, a bad guy, said this about a woman who was mean-spirited and vindictive until she had a gun pointed at her and was desperately talking herself out of trouble. Then she suddenly got caring and articulate. 

  Here’s the thing… We’re all carrying around deep and almost uncontrollable instincts left over from millions of years of survival and evolution. Our ancient ancestors who lived long enough to pass on genes did it by looking for and expecting danger.  Now that we’re, mostly, no longer walking through the unknown wild we’re still on the lookout. Something’s always humming a dark tune just below the surface and keeping us ready to fight or flee. And that “something” wants a face, a name or a label to focus on. That’s how a bad day at the office turns so quickly and easily to road rage in “normal” individuals. It’s why we claim to hate violence but can’t get enough of it in our media. It’s how groups, from street gangs to governments, so easily rally around finding another group to call out, put down, lock up or shoot at. It’s the button advertisers, news networks and social media can so easily push to get us mesmerized, monetized and mobilized.

   This song, a new one, started as I thought about the line from the O’Conner story. It got me thinking about relationships of all sizes; marriages, political parties, governments. It’s a lament, narrowed down to two, for the fact that it’s so hard for us to get excited about something to work for, and so easy for us get fired up about someone to work against.  Here is, “People Need Enemies”.

  Thanks for reading and listening.    Kent