Sunday, January 18, 2009

If you listen to one thing today...

...listen to this:

Segment 3 with Sherman Alexie.

It starts as a pretty standard interview about his most recent book, but then turns into a conversation about good and bad, heroism and villany, and tribal identity that just resonated with me as so profoundly true and honest.

As he discussed how the events of 9/11 changed his view and showed him "the end game of tribalism," I realized he was explaining one of the essential struggles with identity. As soon as you identify with your tribe - I am American, I am liberal, I am Christian - you start encountering conflicts between how you feel and what the larger group believes. The way Alexie described his struggles with that issue was, for me, a complete "ah-hah!" moment.

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