Angulalik and his family, Perry River, 1959,
courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Anti-fur protestors successfully forced the closure of Schumacher Furs in downtown Portland, and now they're focusing on another local business, hoping to close it as well. I certainly sympathize with the protestors' beliefs. I choose not to wear fur, preferring to see it adorn the animal instead. On the other hand, I do use leather products—as do most people. And some people wear furs out of necessity and tradition. The Inuit would perish without the animals that supply their food and clothing in a harsh environment. In other words, this isn't a black-and-white issue.
Should a group of people have the power to deprive someone else of a legal livelihood simply because they disapprove of the business? It's a tricky question. Most people don't like strip clubs in their neighborhood, but as long as they're legal and above board, do they deserve to be harassed? After all, some people disapprove of gays, lesbians, and transsexuals, too. Should these people have the right to harass a gay couple because of these beliefs? Most people would say no.
We all have beliefs about what is "right" and "wrong," but they vary quite a bit. We start having problems when we believe that our beliefs are "more right" than someone else's, so we attempt to impose these beliefs on others. In its most extreme form, this way of thinking leads to the killing of abortion providers or innocent bystanders in a Holocaust museum. In other forms, it may result in legislation that attempts to curtail or punish certain behaviors or practices, such as denying marriage rights to gay people or outlawing the sale of sex toys in Alabama.
When we can no longer communicate and compromise with one another, we have lost any claim to a moral high ground. Most people agree that the health of our planet is vitally important, but when a handful of people decide that they have the right to impose these views on others with violence, then they have lost the right to negotiate. Fighting violence—against others or the environment—with violence solves nothing. Terror is as terror does, whether you're bombing SUVs or recruiting for the Taliban.
So what is this all about, this belief that the end justifies the means—sometimes any means? It's about control. We want to feel validated. To be validated is to be right. And if someone won't concede that we are right—and therefore won't validate us—then we either want to force them to accept that we are right, or we want to force our beliefs on them anyway.
The problem is that we control nothing except our own thoughts and our reaction to things. We are not in control. We can't goad, shout down, bully, berate, convince, or cleverly argue anyone into submitting to our beliefs, even if we feel certain that the belief would be in the best interests of the other person. Everyone has a right to their own beliefs and their own healing process, whatever that may look like.
Of course, we can talk about our beliefs appropriately. We can express ourselves. We can stand up for the things we believe in. But coercion has no place in civilized discourse. We can't control the world. Other people are going to disagree with us. They are going to do things we may not approve of. That is their choice and their right. We already have laws that we have agreed upon, for the most part, that says that we cannot physically harm one another. But we must also do more than that. We must treat one another with respect. We cannot solve the problems we face if we constantly degrade one another instead of talking openly, respectfully, and with tolerance for our differences. For some, compromise equals defeat. Indeed, it is a defeat—everybody loses.
The end never outweighs the means. We must start as we mean to go on. It is the means that define who we are, not the end. The means are the choices we make every day. We can make loving choices that will result in a loving end. Or we can make fear-based choices that validate our egos in the short term, resulting in an end that we didn't want or expect. Be in integrity with the means, and the end will take care of itself.
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