you swat the mosquito. You are doing the same thing when you cut down a tree. Or pick a
flower. Or slaughter a cow and eat it.
Then I can’t touch anything! I have to leave everything exactly the way it is! If termites are
destroying my house, I have to just move out and give them the house, because, after all, I
don’t want to murder them. How far do you take this?
That is a good question. How far do you take this? Does the fact that you don’t kill people
mean that you don’t kill termites? Conversely, does the fact that you kill termites mean that it
is okay to kill people?
No, of course not.
Well, then, there you have it. You have answered your own question.
Yes, because I have used a c^4 flč rent value system. It’s not the one you are suggesting here.
I’m not saying that “we are all One.” I’m saying that people and termites are not One, nor are
people and trees. And so, having made that distinction, I am treating them differently! Under
Your value system, I could not do that.
Of course you could. Remember, I have said you are all One, but I have not said you are all
the same. Is your hair the same as your heart?
I beg your pardon?
Because you cut your hair off, does that mean you will cut your heart out?
I see what You’re saying.
Do you? Do you, really? Because many human beings act as if they don’t. They treat
everyone and everything as if it were the same. They treat human life as if it were worth
nothing more than the life of a mosquito. A termite. If they see that it is okay to cut their hair
off, they cut their heart out. They bite their nose to spite their face.
Not many people act like that.
I tell you this: every one of you has acted like that, in one way or another. Every one of you
has acted indiscriminately, treating one thing as if it were the same as another—even treating
one person as if he or she were another.
You walk down the street and see a white person and think that she is the same as you
imagine all white people to be. You walk down the street and see a black person and think he
is the same as you imagine all black people to be. In this you make two mistakes.
You have stereotyped Whites and Blacks, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, Russians
and Americans, Serbs and Albanians, bosses and workers, even blondes and brunettes...
and you will not stop stereotyping, because to stop stereotyping means that you will have to
stop iustifying your treatment of each other.
Okay, so where are we with all this? How do I treat everyone and everything as if it were a
part of Me? ‘What if I decide that someone, or some group, is a cancer on my body? Do I not
cut it out? Is that not what we call ethnic cleansing, the wiping out, or the displacement, of a
whole people?
Indeed, you have made such decisions.