All of us, no matter how hard we try, succumb to preconceived stereotypes and the construction of others who may disagree with us enemies. Salman Rushdie discusses this extensively in his memoir Knife as he writes about his stabbing in August 2022 at the Chautauqua Institute. During a fictionalized interview with his would be assassin, Rushdie tells the man, “I know that it is possible to construct and image of a man, a second self, that bears very little resemblance to the first self, but this second self gains credibility because it is repeated over and over again until it begins to feel real, more real that the first self.” Rushdie points out how easy it is to construct an image of someone that is not, in any way, the reality of the individual. Once that “second self” arises, it takes over, and subsumes the “first self,” the true self, thus making it easier to justify violence and oppression against someone.

Earlier in Knife, Rushdie points out how this occurred following the publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa placed upon him by Ruhollah Khomeini. Writing about how some relished the attack on him, Rushdie writes, “And, inevitably, there were voices expressing pleasure about what had happened. If you are turned into an object of hate, there will be people who hate you.” Once the “second self” arises and the “first self” falls beneath the surface, then the “second self,” the constructed self based on assumptions, lies, and falsities, can easily become “an object of hate,” an enemy. Yet, that does not mean we have to surrender to the “second selves” that others construct. When we see others as enemies, it becomes much easier for us to enact violence (physical, psychological, etc.) upon them. However, “[w]e’d find it hard,” Lillian Smith says, “to have enemies if we cared about what happened to them.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot of the past few months as I read Rushdie’s memoir, Smith, Gert Ledig, and others. Along with these works, this theme has also arisen as I read Ron Rash’s short story “Return.” In this six page story, which details a soldier returning home to North Carolina after fighting in the Pacific during World War II, Rash highlights the ways that instead of thinking about ourselves as different from one another and constructing enemies we need to think about ourselves, no matter where we exist on this planet hurtling through space, as linked together in our shared humanity.

We never know the protagonist’s name in “Return”; instead, we only get the nickname, “Hillbilly,” that Peterson and others place upon him. The contemporary action in the story follows the man as he walks through the mountains and hollers, past the creeks, cemeteries, and other landmarks, to his home where his family members await. As he walks, the man thinks back to his time in the Philippines when he longed for home and also when he killed a sniper perched in a tree. While in the war, the man thought about returning home, about the walk he currently engages in, and in his thoughts he contemplating the ways that the water in draining from Goshen Mountain connected with the waters surrounding the Philippines. “[H]e knew,” the narrators says, “oceans had currents the same way creeks and rivers did, he’d imagine one drop of water making its way from his home in North Carolina to the green waters of the South Pacific.” He would trace the water across the globe back home, through the Panama Canal into the Mississippi River into the Ohio River, all the way back to Holder Branch.

On the ground, the sniper reached into his shirt and “freed a thin silver necklace from under his shirt” which had “something affixed to it.” Peterson, who “had a college education and was going to be a doctor once he war was over,” told the man that “the Japanese only worshiped their emperor,” and initially the man believed him because of his education. However, when he sees the cross around the sniper’s neck, he knows “Peterson was wrong.” As the man gives a canteen of water to Peterson for the sniper, the sniper dies and Peterson reaches down and removes “the cross and necklace from the dead man’s neck,” offering it to the man as a war trophy that he could sell for some money.

Continuing up the mountain, the man stops at the cemetery and sees a new headstone, imagining it is his own, and he continues upwards, passing familiar sites, leading his mind back to the Japanese sniper lying dead on the ground in the Philippines. Holding the cross and the necklace, he knelt down next to the other man, saying “a quick prayer.” He reached into the man’s mouth, opening it, and placed “the cross and the necklace onto the rigid tongue.” The man realizes that the man he killed is, like him, a Christian. He realizes that, unlike Peterson’s construction of the sniper as an insurmountable enemy that can never be like him, the sniper is a man, like himself. The sniper probably had the same thoughts, tracing the waters back to his home in Japan, hoping for the day he could return home to those he knew and loved.

What makes it so hard for us to see one another as an extension of ourself, not as an enemy or an “object of hate?” Why do we allow individuals to manipulate us into fear, telling us to watch out for others, even when we have so much in common with those individuals? I think about this a lot, especially when we think about the Islamophobia that arose and maintains post 9/11. Taking aside the fact that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all arise from Abraham and are thus referred to as the Abrahamic religions, one look at the five pillars of Islam and a Christian would be hard pressed to see them as different from the tenets of Christianity, especially the first four which include a declaration of faith, prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.

Those in power make it easy for us to hate, for us to view one anoter as enemies. They do this to maintain control, to separate us from one another, playing upon our superficial difference in culture, ethnicity, religion, or other things, instead of playing upon our similarities and connections, the latter of which would make us, inevitably, stronger. Until we realize this, we will be stuck in a perpetual loop where we construct objects of hate to justify our own selfish desires and actions. We will continually succumb to the whims of those who do not have our self interest in mind. We will not progess. We will regress because in that regression it makes the hold of the powerful stronger as they tighten their grip on our collective being.

What are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.