The Lost Massey Lectures (27 page)

There are three words for “love” in the Greek New Testament; one is the word “eros.” Eros is a sort of aesthetic, romantic love. Plato used to talk about it a great deal in his dialogues, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. And there is and can always be something beautiful about eros, even in its expressions of romance. Some of the most beautiful love in all of the world has been expressed this way.

Then the Greek language talks about “philos,” which is another word for love, and philos is a kind of intimate love
between personal friends. This is the kind of love you have for those people that you get along with well, and those that you like on this level you love because you are loved.

Then the Greek language had another word for love, and that is the word “agape.” Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love every man because God loves them. This is what Jesus meant when He said “love your enemies.” And I'm happy that He didn't say “like your enemies” because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Like is an affectionate emotion and I can't like anybody bombing my home. I can't like anybody who would exploit me. I can't like anybody who would trample over me with injustices; I can't like them. I can't like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out. But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than like. Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. And I think this is where we are as a people, in our struggle for racial justice. We can't ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.

I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens' councillors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall match your capacity to
inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is co-operation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we're not fit culturally and otherwise for integration, but we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations. Something must remind us of this as we once again stand in the Christmas season and think of the Easter season, simultaneously, for the two somehow go together. Christ came to show us the way. Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified Him, and there on Good Friday on the Cross it was still dark, but then Easter came and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that truth-crushed earth will rise again. Easter justifies Carlyle in saying “No lie can live for ever.” And so this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace on earth and good will toward men, let us know that in the process, we have cosmic companionship.

In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C., and talked to the nation about many things. Toward
the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you to-day that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw that dream turn to a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating, and as I saw so-called military advisers, 16,000 strong, turn into fighting soldiers while to-day over 500,000 American boys are fighting on Asian soil. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close to-day by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so to-day I still have a dream.

I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers. I still have a dream this morning that one day every Negro in this country, every colored person in the world, will be judged on the basis of the content of his character, rather than the color of his skin, and every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. I still have a dream to-day, that one day the idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and empty stomachs of Mississippi
will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the end of a prayer but rather the first order of business on every legislative agenda. I still have a dream to-day, that one day justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I still have a dream to-day, that in all of our state houses and city halls, men will be elected to go there who will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God. I still have a dream today, that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more. I still have a dream to-day, that one day the lamb and the lion will lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still have a dream to-day, that one day every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. I still have a dream, that with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth, and good will toward men. It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy.

The other day I asked a bright young electronics engineer from the west—born and now living in British Columbia, brought up in Alberta—what he thought would happen in the forthcoming Quebec referendum. It's a question I often ask. In reply what I usually get is a statement, either indifferent or impassioned, of how the person I am addressing feels about Quebec separatism.

But this time I got a flat, forthright prediction. “They'll vote No,” he said. “Why are you so sure?” I asked. “Because,” he answered, “nothing really interesting ever happens in Canada.”

Now, I myself have no idea how the referendum will turn out so I am not going to speculate about that. But I agree with my young friend that sovereignty-association is an interesting possibility. As an idea, it can mean two very different things. It can mean new arrangements among already existing nations as in the case of the European Economic Community or the younger five-member Andean community in South America. On the other
hand it might also mean new arrangements among parts of already existing nations, as has been tentatively suggested by some European separatists and as René Lévesque is proposing. That second version of the idea forces us not only to think about sovereignty-association itself, but also to confront the idea of separation or secession.

It's hard even to think about separations because the subject is so charged with emotion. Sometimes people literally acknowledge this when they say “It's unthinkable.”

Nationalistic emotions are dangerous of course. They've helped fuel many a war, many an act of terrorism, many a tyranny. But they are valuable emotions too. One thing they mean is that we are profoundly attached to the communities of which we are part, and this attachment includes for most of us our nations. We care that we have communities. We care how our nations fare, care on a level deeper by far than concern with what is happening to the gross national product. Our sheer feelings of who we are twine with feelings about our nations, so that when we feel proud of our nations we somehow feel personally proud; when we feel ashamed of our nations, or sorrow for them, the shame or the sorrow hits home.

These emotions are felt deeply by separatists and they are felt deeply by those who ardently oppose separatists. The conflicts are not between different kinds of emotions. They are conflicts, rather, between different ways of identifying the nation, different choices as to what the nation is. For Quebec separatists, the nation is Quebec. For their opponents, either inside the province or outside it, the nation is Canada defined as including Quebec. Canadians who are indifferent to the question of Quebec separatism, or who can be as cool about it as my friend who rated it on a scale marked from “dull” to “interesting,” are likely either to identify emotionally chiefly with some other province of Canada
or else to identify emotionally with a Canada that they define to themselves as not-necessarily-including-Quebec.

That last is my own emotional identification. I can't justify it as rational because the fact is that on some level of sheer feeling, not of reason, Quebec seems to me to be already separate and different from what I understand as my own community. Not that Quebec seems to me to be inferior, or threateningly strange or the wrong way for a place to be, or anything of that sort. Just not my community. When I asked my engineer friend whether he identified emotionally with all of Canada or a part he said, “That's such a personal question I feel it's my own business.” But then he relented enough to say, “My place is out west.”

Trying to argue about these feelings is as fruitless as trying to argue that people in love ought not to be in love, or that if they must be then they should be cold and hard-headed about choosing their attachments. It doesn't work that way. We feel. The feelings are their own argument.

The irrationality of all this shows up in universal patterns of inconsistency. DeGaulle, who said “Vive le Québec Libre!” never said “Vive le Provence Libre!” nor “Long live a free Brittany!” He could feel for separatists abroad but not for separatists at home.

This pattern is perfectly ordinary, perhaps always has been. The same Englishmen who ardently favoured Greek independence from Turkish rule in the 19th century did not therefore also campaign for Irish independence from English rule. Rationally the one would certainly follow from the other; emotionally, no. British support of Pakistani separatists at the time when India became independent did not imply any comfort or support for Scottish nationalists. Just so, many a Canadian who opposes Quebec separatism was sympathetic to the unsuccessful Biafran secession movement in Nigeria. I know some of those people. The same Canadians who can argue eloquently that justice and good
sense, both, are on the side of Esthonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Walloon, Kurdish, or Palestinian separatists can maintain that Quebec separatists must be out of their minds to want something so impractical and destructive.

Separatists are quite as rationally inconsistent themselves. If and when they win their way they always promptly forget their championship of self-determination and oppose any further separation at home. The colonies that became the United States declared their independence on the grounds that their grievances made it “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.” It has often been remarked how inconsistent this is with the war waged by the Union forces against the secessionist Confederate States some four score and seven years later.

Today's newly independent nations are one and all against their own separatists or potential separatists. As one student of government has put it, “Leaders of these new regimes are desperately concerned to argue that self-determination can be employed once in the process of securing independence . . . but that it cannot be resorted to subsequently.”
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Finland, after having achieved independence from Russia, promptly refused the right of self-determination to the population of the Aaland Islands; they were ethnically Swedish and sought to break away from finland with the object of joining Sweden. Pakistan, having won its own separation, then went on to fight the separation of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. And so on. We can be sure that if Quebec ever negotiates a separation it will oppose adamantly, whether then or thereafter, any separations from Quebec. That is the way all nations behave, no matter how old or young, how powerful or weak, how developed or undeveloped, or how they themselves came into
being. But this inconsistency is inconsistent only in the light of reason. The behavior and attitudes are really quite remarkably consistent. The consistency is emotional and unreasonable.