Between Coexistence and Unity through living together: Self-Concordant Identity

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

As time goes on witnessing human groups migrating from a community that oppresses them as they seek refuge and solace in a society that welcomes them offering them a decent life in concordance with their aspirations, our human togetherness becomes a sort of mosaic bearing in its bosom the seeds of disintegration, discord, and perhaps even the sparks of civil wars.

On the other hand, social progress, and the upsurge of people’s activities as well as the diversity of their affiliations play a role in increasing the dimensions that make up the human identity and the complexity of its composition. Furthermore, a newly rising view of life and the universe plays at present a role in increasing the openness of modern man and his desire to embrace ideas and viewpoints and accept new values ​​that would not have been accepted years ago.

This great variety of elements that flow into individual and group identities transforms these identities into a very complex and difficult structure to grasp. More importantly, such a structure is difficult to manage at the collective level in modern societies in which diverse ethnicities are alien to each other, a fact which makes it difficult for each group to accept other groups as a prelude to social integration as well as in the achievement of a unity of life and destiny.

At the outset of displacement and promiscuous common life, these groups would find themselves in a state of an unstable coexistence commensurate with  the type of government policies that seek to manage diversity while at the same time maintaining a state of civil peace and social stability.

However should the state be sensitive to the possible pitfalls of diversity that impedes the achievement of social maturity, then it finds itself forced to establish social integration policies that preserve the peculiarities of the sub-identities that make up society, while at the same time integrating these identities into a political-rights melting pot on the basis of a social contract that prepares and promotes a common sense of belongingness .

Long is the pathway between coexistence and realistic participation in a common togetherness. Fully achieved integration can only be reached by reconciling the various dimensions of a split identity through a judicial-political safeguard that is secured by a just state efficient in dealing with political as well as with civil entities  in order to preserve the unity of society as a prelude to its progress and uprise.

Other than that, reactionary discords take the form of masked conflicts over general political goals, hiding behind the masks of bigoted wars.