We have all heard the amazing reports from the Human Genome Project confirming that we are one human race. But I wonder, since our shared 99.9% DNA makes us so similar, why do humans hyper-focus on our differences, especially those that spark conflicts?
Imagine a routine doctor’s appointment like this one:
You arrive for a routine appointment on the third floor of a generic medical office building in an area not far from where you live. You jockey for a parking place, navigate the random people milling around the lobby, bypass the elevator crowd, and opt for a solo sprint up the stairs. Breathless but still on time, you prepare to open the door and step inside the waiting room.
To your dismay, the room is filled nearly to capacity (pre-Covid19, obviously).
The mandatory check-in with the receptionist will give you a few seconds to assess and process your next step. “Please take a seat. The nurse will call you back shortly,” the receptionist concludes. ‘Take a seat’ requires choosing one of the three remaining open chairs. The room arrangement also precludes standing to the side or in a corner to satisfy your need for personal space.
Your brain instantly deploys a series of micro-assessments
using a set of internal discriminators based on your personal experience.
Does your choice start with:
- Elimination – the person you most want to avoid – or
- Selection – the more desirable to you of the persons available?
What hierarchy of factors would influence your choice?
Move the scenario to the subway or grocery store checkout lanes or a church worship service. Do you react differently or similarly?
Am I safe in guessing that the following statement would not be in your initial thought process?
I am 99.9% identical to…. that one…. and to that one….
Admittedly, that would not be my first thought, either. In a medical office, I would get as far as I could from the coughing, sneezing, runny-nosed person and try to sit by a little old lady who might need a kind word. At church, I would pass by children known to be noisy and unruly and instead opt for the sad-eyed young lady sitting alone. Those filters would only kick in once I had determined where best to position myself to see and hear the speaker well. If the subway were in Brooklyn, I would quickly grab any seat (hopefully close to the exit) that I could find but hang on tightly to my bag. But then, I have other stories about Brooklyn and NYC subways for another day.
Honestly, that statement has been on my mind for the past several weeks. It plays again and again as I sadly read and watch the stories of violence, mass shootings, anger, and hatred spread destructively across our country and our humankind.
What if we could reshape our thinking and reset our filters to remember this truth
I am 99.9% identical to –
- Any man, woman, or child ripped from their homeland and forced to cross the ocean in the hull of a slave trader’s ship – that includes those of John Newton in the mid-1700s
- Any Jew condemned to a Nazi concentration camp
- Any U.S. soldier captured by the Japanese and mercilessly forced into the Bataan Death March in 1942 – that includes my friend, Jessie Miller
- Any Cherokee and other southeastern Indian nations forced to walk the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and herded onto reservation lands west of the Mississippi River
- Any Chinese citizen gunned down in Tiananmen Square
- Any unsuspecting girl kidnapped, sold, or conned into the trade of sex trafficking today
Unfortunately, I am also 99.9% identical to
- Hitler
- Mussolini
- Nero
- Attila the Hun
- Ted Bundy
- BTK
Fill in any name –
- ancient [Adam, Eve, Noah]
- modern [hated politician, beloved educator]
Choose someone of any national, geographical or ethnic origin, and you will get the same result:
We Humankinds are 99.9% identical.
[Substitute your name], and I am delighted to say once again that I am 99.9% identical to you (plus I am 100% grateful for the time you are spending reading this post).
What about the 0.1% difference between Humankinds?
Of all your genetic code, that seemingly insignificant 0.1% difference is located among the billions of base pairs on your DNA strands that make you – uniquely you – among the eight billion or so earth dwellers alive today on our beautiful planet hanging in the vast universe.
What if everyone was a clone?
Imagine 8 billion clones of yourself. Worse yet, imagine 8 billion of me or someone you dislike. Would that make daily living more congenial? If you think so, ask identical twins.
As the study of genomics and epi-genomics expands, I notice that people are anxious to pin their problems on their DNA and/or environment. My purpose in this post is not to have a scientific discussion about DNA. Instead, I want to shift our perspective on human differences and our propensity for allowing differences to generate negative attitudes, fear, and conflict.
Perfect DNA and perfect home, economic, and natural environments do not preclude the occurrence of conflict or violent acts. Remember the perfect Garden of Eden and its surrounding pristine environment? Perfect DNA did not prevent a wrong choice by Eve or Adam. The first son then murders the first brother. We can’t blame that on anything but our human heart (emotions and desires) and our God-given will to make choices (good or evil).
Find beauty in the 0.1%
Without the 0.1% difference, we would be a boring conglomeration of clones, indistinguishable, and bland.
That seemingly minuscule difference makes us identifiable as uniquely gifted individuals with great potential for good and an uncanny bent for choices that hurt oneself and others. That chunk of DNA holds information about health risks, adds color to your profile picture, and tells genealogists about the areas where people like you, people whom you call family and ancestors, have lived, loved, and passed through.
Speaking of the past, look back.
We carry several “past versions: our individual past, our familial past, our national or ethnic past, and the collective past of humankind. Too often, we carry painful, hidden packets of personal history into our future. We can deny it, try to hide it, and trash-talk it, but there is no erasing it. No attempt to eradicate it can wipe away the existence of past history.
Where does that leave us as Humankinds?
- Don’t let a painful past limit or define your future. Personal change occurs in the present.
- Remember, time does not heal wounds, including word wounds. Unaddressed, they fester and become putrid. Get help!
- Conflicts are fueled by differences that divide us, opinions that clash, and purposes that oppose.
- Both sustainable change and conflict resolution take effort and often require help.
- Those differences that do divide us do not have to become conflicts that destroy us, individually or collectively. Learn how.
John Newton could not escape his past as a slave trader. He anguished over the intensity of suffering he had caused. The trail of his actions spread across oceans and continents. For what he could not erase, he sought and found forgiveness from God.
To the rest of us, he bequeathed a hymn that became spread across national, ethnic, cultural over the centuries since its writing in 1772. We know and sing it as Amazing Grace. The Cherokee of Graham County sang it in their native tongue as they tearfully crossed over Tatham Gap, leaving Graham County, NC (that we call home). The familiar tune was heard across Southern plantations in America by generations of slaves.
Its sound is still sweet to our ears today. Because its message is truthfully based, people like you and me and people like John Newton can be redeemed, forgiven, set free from their dreadful past, and given a whole new life.
Amazing Grace
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.”
John Newton, 1725 – 1808
Hear Amazing Grace – 6 different tunes
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Col. 1:13 ESV
