Let Us Make Each Other’s Friend
Come, friend, share your stories, and let us entrance each other into the beauty of culture.
Let us be Prometheus and Athena rather than Romulus and Remus.
The experiences we have together will create a new world and new life. What will that life be? Will it be an empire born of murder? Or will our experience be a creative union aimed at the highest ideal?
Will our shared community be a colonial and exploitive people forged in the fires of conflict, destruction, and bloodshed?
Will we be guided by the psychological force that destroys communities?
Or will we be a flourishing community? Rather than fighting, we could get along, get on the same page, and get our community together as an embodiment of the peaceful and prosperous potential that characterizes human civilization.
Will we pursue a good and virtuous life that can be whatever it decides to be? Will we aim at the life created by Prometheus and Athena? Will we aim at the life that was embodied in the people of Athens, both her history and myth? Or will we become Romulus and Remus, destined to forge an empire through blood and conquest?
We are not enemies, you and I. There is a friend and well-intentioned interlocutor within each of us. But, if there is a part of us that is enemies, let us have a discussion, and demonstrate what Abraham Lincoln meant when he proclaimed, “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friend.” For he was a man who often strived to understand his adversary and truly know the contents of their heart. He was famous for saying, “I don’t not like that man. I must get to know him better.”
Of course, we will butt heads and disagree, but the ideal community is a tolerant and peaceful place for all people who wish to be a part.
The community we create could be the best human civilization has to offer, or it could be the murder of Remus and the foundation of an empire.
What will this community be?
