Oh, I Hate The Romans Already!

Reading a couple of pieces over the last few days by Magic Roundabouts and Padded Pants, and Treadly and Me, and even this piece in the New York Times, I’ve been struck at the way we see differences in our fellow human human beings rather than the similarities.

There’s some switch inside our brains that tries to divide the world into neat little boxes of “Us” (usually on the side of Righteousness)  and “Them” (feckless, low-life scumbags, who are the source of All That Is Wrong With The World).

This urge to divide the world around us, and to sort out which tribe we belong in goes deeper than would benefit our true self interests. Yet like a pair of dysfunctional co-dependents, we just can’t help ourselves, always looking for ways to find fault and a source of antagonism.

There’s always something that makes them just not like us. We ride the way people should ride, and if more people were like us, the world would be a better place.

We engage in a frantic game of one-upmanship trying to elevate our particular kind of bikefullness above theirs. Because after all, it gets us through those brief phases of doubt & uncertainty.

Heck, sometimes it gets hard to sort out who’s who in all this mess, and into which part of the hierarchy of people who are on the Side Of All That Is Good our particular tribe fits.

I mean, obviously it’s just our group that’s Good. But there might be some others with whom we could make common purpose.

Maybe it’s time that we stopped looking for the differences between, and made more of an effort to work together. After all, these senseless divisions have been exploited for years by our common enemies.

‘Enemies’ might seem a divisive word.

But it’s only by uniting against these people that we can roll back their hegemony. And I’m sure they’ll thank us when we get them out of their cars and make them just like us.

Just like us.

Just. Like. Us.

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