Lou picked at the Mexican food Carol had brought him while the group assembled back into the room. The mood was much lighter among them than it had been at the beginning, when they were sizing each other up. The tension of the exchanges during much of the morning session seemed to have faded away. Gwyn, in fact, was deep in conversation with Miguel and seemed to be enjoying it. Elizabeth and Carol were in the back of the room browsing a Camp Moriah leaflet together.
Just then, Pettis walked up to Lou from behind.
“So, Lou,” he said, as if they were picking up a prior conversation, “four years in ‘Nam.”
Lou nodded.
“Hat’s off to you, my friend. I was there, but it’s different flying above the jungle than it was down below. I know that.”
Lou nodded appreciatively. In peacetime, pilots always think themselves superior to the so-called grunts on the ground. And the infantrymen carry around an inferiority complex about it as well, although they’d never admit it. In wartime, however, the psychology changes. The high-flying pilots quickly develop a deep admiration for their partners on the ground. And soldiers on the ground, although grateful for their cover when they hear the roar of supportive aircraft overhead, would tell you, if pressed, that those well-heeled flyboys never get their uniforms dirty enough or their vital parts close enough to the crosshairs of the enemy to know real bravery—or fear for that matter. In Vietnam and elsewhere, the grunts receive the lion’s share of the admiration and respect of fellow soldiers.
“Thanks, Pettis. It’s good to be with a fellow vet. Tell me,” he continued, “what is it you do in Texas?”
Five minutes or so later, Avi and Yusuf walked in the room, and everyone, Lou and Pettis included, took their seats. Lou looked across at Jenny’s parents, who appeared to be okay, a surprise to him under the circumstances.
“Well, welcome back,” Avi greeted them. “Before we move forward, does anyone have any questions about anything?”
Lou shot his hand up—the first time he hadn’t just blurted out a comment. “What happened to Jenny?”
“Jenny is fine,” Yusuf answered. “As some of you may know,” he continued, “she took off running soon after we started this morning.”
“Have you caught her?” Lou followed up.
“Actually, Lou, we’re not trying to catch her,” Yusuf answered. “This is a voluntary program, so we won’t force anyone into it. But we will make sure she stays safe. And we’ll do that in a way that invites her, as much as possible, to choose to join with us.”
Lou was perplexed. “So what does that mean you’re doing?” he asked.
“It means two of our workers are following her, trying to engage her in meaningful conversation, and a truck with backup if needed is following behind but out of sight. Everything will be fine,” he smiled. “Anything else?”
Lou raised his hand again.
“This whole ‘see people as people or see them as objects’ distinction,” he said with a hint of disdain in his voice, “where does it come from?”
Avi spoke first. “It comes out of an exploration in philosophy,” he said. “Perhaps it would help to give a brief overview.” He looked over at Yusuf, who nodded.
Avi turned back to the group. “I hesitate doing philosophy with you,” he said with an apologetic smirk. “Especially first thing after lunch. But I’ll take a chance on it, for a minute or two anyway. If you’re pretty sure you don’t want any philosophy, just plug your ears for a minute.” He looked around the room. “You are all familiar with the philosopher René Descartes?”
“Not a bad philosopher—for a Frenchman,” Elizabeth cracked. Her hands were no longer clasped together, and she was leaning back comfortably in her chair.
“Not bad indeed,” Avi grinned. Turning to the rest, he continued. “Descartes is the father of what is known as the modern period of philosophy, and he is famous still to this day for the starting point of his very ambitious philosophical theory, which he hoped would explain all of existence. His foundational assumption was the famous line Cogito ergo sum—or, ‘I think therefore I am.’”
Most in the room were familiar with this line.
“You will notice there are big assumptions in Descartes’ starting point,” Avi continued. “The biggest of these is the assumption of the primacy of the separate human consciousness—what Descartes called the I.
“Hundreds of years after Descartes, a series of philosophers began to call into question the modern philosophical arguments that Descartes started in motion, in particular this central individualistic assumption that undergirded Descartes’ work. One of these philosophers was a man named Martin Heidegger. If Heidegger had been a contemporary of Descartes, he might have asked him this question: ‘René, tell me—from where did you acquire the language that enabled you to formulate the thought “I think therefore I am”?’”
Avi looked around the group to let that question settle on them. “Of course,” he continued, “Descartes acquired those words, and the ability to think with them, from others. Which is to say, he did not conjure them from a separate, individualized I.
“Consider what this means for Descartes’ theory,” he continued. “There is a kind of brute fact that just is—the fact of being in the world with others. Descartes was able to postulate that the separate self was what was most fundamental only because he acquired language in a world with others.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth interjected, “so being in the world with others, and not the idea of a separate self, is what is fundamental. Is that what you are suggesting?”
“Exactly,” Avi agreed. “Descartes’ foundational assumption is disproved by the conditions that made it possible for him to state it in the first place. So Heidegger, among others,” he continued, “with his attack on individualism, shifted the focus of the philosophical world away from the separate self and onto the idea of being with others.
“A contemporary of Heidegger named Martin Buber, whom I mentioned this morning, agreed with Heidegger that way of being in the world is what is most fundamental to human experience. He observed that there are basically two ways of being in the world: we can be in the world seeing others as people or we can be in the world seeing others as objects. He called the first way of being the I - Thou way and the second the I - It way, and he argued that we are always, in every moment, being either I - Thou or I It—seeing others as people or seeing others as objects.
“So, Lou,” he said, turning to face him, “that is a long way of saying that it was Martin Buber who first observed these two basic ways of being, or at least formulated them that way. He was the first to articulate the differences in human experience when we are seeing others as objects as opposed to seeing them as they are, as people.” Looking around at the rest of the group, he said, “Okay, it’s safe to unplug your ears now.”
“Well, almost,” Yusuf interjected with a smile. “Let me add one more thought. Buber’s observation of these two ways of being raised the question of how we move from one way of being to another—from seeing people as people, for example, to seeing others as objects, and vice versa. But this is a question Buber never answered. He simply observed the two ways of being and their differences. It is left to us, now, to figure out how we can change our way of being—if we want to, that is.
“For our purposes,” he continued, “the question Buber did not address is the question we must answer. We have been suggesting that the foundational problem in our homes, our workplaces, and our battlefields is that our hearts are too often at war—that is, we too often insist on seeing people as objects. And we have seen how one warring heart invites more ‘object seeing’ and war in others. It follows from this that in order to find peace, we must first understand how we and others have foregone peace and chosen war.”
“Sometimes we don’t choose war,” Lou butted in. “It chooses us.”
“Yes, Lou,” Yusuf agreed. “Sometimes we might be forced to defend ourselves, you’re exactly right. But that is a different thing than saying that we are forced to despise, to rage, to denigrate, to belittle. No one can force a warring heart upon us. When our hearts go to war, we ourselves have chosen it.”
“How?” Lou asked.
“That is exactly what we will now explore,” Yusuf answered.