Society in Harmony...oxymoron?

Societies are (unfortunately) populated by human beings, who are notoriously known for their inability to see eye to eye most of the time. The United States came into being with the help of a document that lists all the reasons why the people living there could not stay in harmony with the country they originally came from. History is full of stories of groups of people who decided they could not find a harmonious way to live with each other and decided that the only way to make things right was to kill half the population. So it is obvious that harmony in society is a goal that is laudable, but so far has not been achievable. Different people have come up with ideas about how to create harmony in a society, and some have even created an atmosphere where harmony was possible for while. But it seems that as long as human beings continue to view people who are a different race or culture as "other" and "alien" there will never be a time when harmony can take root and stay.

To me, in order to attempt to create a society where harmony is possible, you must start with the children. Everyone has heard that children are color-blind and do not see the differences between themselves and others. If a group of committed adults could raise the children in a society to keep this characteristic, there might be hope. They must strive to teach everyone from a young age to not be afraid of others and to feel as if they are part of the human family. Fear is one of the strongest and most influential emotions that humans experience, and it influences every area of life. We are afraid of being poor, hungry, hurt, lied to, taken advantage of, left alone, etc. And one of our biggest fears is that big "other", whether the other is the boogey man or the monster that lives in the forest or those weird new people that moved in next door. If we are taught from a young age to be interested in learning all about the "other" instead of being afraid of it, we will lose this habit of dividing ourselves from each other. The fear of being hurt by someone we don't know is the same fear that they feel about us. We also worry that to let in the "other" will mean that we will lose what we are, our individuality. The only way to know that we will stay "us" is to let those others into our lives. We may not stay exactly the same, but we will become "ourselves-plus" a new and improved us. And the people we let in will become a new and improved them.

A real-life example of this is the "immigration question" in the U.S. going on right now. Many people in our country are worried about what will happen to American society if we continue to allow immigrants to come here. Some want to find all the immigrants that are here illegally, and send them all back "where they came from". What they do not understand is that this is not a new happening in our country. It is too late to round these people up and send them back. Most of them have been here too long to even be considered "other" any longer. To remove these people from our society would be like removing every female from our society. They are no longer outsiders, they have changed our society in ways that we cannot even comprehend. The U.S. would not be the country it is if we sent them back. Our so-called "others" have become us. Americans began this country as "other" and we created a society that was considered to be all inclusive ("all men are created equal"). The only way the immigration question can be answered is by changing our view of immigrants as "other" and remembering that human beings should never be afraid of each other. We are all "us". The day when we can all see each other as "us" and not "them" will be the day we start to find a harmonious existence.