GIVING REFUGE TO THE STRANGER
Providing safety and support to those fleeing persecution reflects what is best in us.
The plagues we confront in our time, both the literal plague wrought by the coronavirus, which stubbornly doesn't go away, climate change that will determine the fate of the planet, and the very real threats to our democracy, have caused me to recently reflect on the negative proclivities of the human heart.
My mind works dialectically and so I also feel impelled to evoke aspects of our behavior that speak to the best of our natures. There is a tendency to focus on the negative. A plane crash or natural disaster makes the news. The countless acts of kindness people bestow on others don't. Yet, I would contend that most people are kind to their fellows more often than not, and often very gracious as well. We all want to be seen as good in our own eyes and to appear such in the eyes of others. Most of the time we are.
If there is a penchant for cruelty, there are uncountable examples of the opposite. One which has long caught my attention and I find of special interest is the goodwill and safety extended to those who are fleeing persecution. Today we refer to it as the right to asylum. But its origins are ancient, maybe even prehistoric. Beyond that, some scholars contend that the inclination to assist and provide safety to those in danger is an anthropological phenomenon rooted in the nature of the human species.
The propensity to provide safety to the stranger, and the causes of altruism more generally, have been matters of debate among evolutionary psychologists. If we are looking for the origins of altruism, evolutionary theory going back to Darwin would locate it in the survival value of those so acting. Such behavior would have positive adaptive value in passing on this capacity to future generations.
The positive ability to adapt to one's environment would be further enhanced through altruistic behavior that is reciprocal. In other words, by giving to others I receive something of benefit to myself, thus strengthening my ability to survive and generationally pass it down. Darwin recognized that this process could extend to one's kin who share genetic similarities strengthening those properties even at the cost to the individual. But how to explain altruism to others, to strangers outside the kinship group, presents a problem.
Yet altruism is a universal trait that we manifest whether giving charity to children in Africa whom we do not know and will never meet or donating our blood or organs to total strangers.
This propensity is very much part of our humanity and I believe giving refuge to those fleeing danger is among its earliest recorded manifestations. It finds strong emphasis in the Bible. I have long found it of interest that the commandment to meet our obligations to the stranger is the most often cited in the Hebrew Bible, no less than 36 times. It is cited more often in the Torah than the commandment to keep the Sabbath or to love God. My favored version reads: “Do not oppress a stranger; you yourselves know the soul of the stranger because you were strangers in Egypt.” Not only does it prohibit oppression, but it also provides a clue as to why this action is motivated. It inverts the impulse toward revenge and places in its stead fundamental humanity that emerges from identifying with oppression.
The Bible also specifies six cities of refuge. If a person has committed manslaughter, the perpetrator could flee to one of these towns and be held safely to stand trial. Such an approach undercuts the common practice of blood vengeance and vendetta justice, and as such can be seen as a stepping stone to the creation of what we accept as due process instantiated in judicial systems.
Similar ideas of refuge were common in the ancient world. They could be found in ancient Greece and Rome, and in Hawaii, and Margaret Mead reported on it as an age-old practice in New Guinea. It speaks to a universal propensity that I believe transcends culture and is unique to the human species.
In Medieval Europe, sanctuaries were extensive. A person who committed a serious crime, or was accused of such, could flee into a church and remain unharmed. He could thereby avoid execution in exchange for exile. With the emergence of the modern state in the 17th century, the Church practice of sanctuary was transformed into what today is accepted as the right to asylum.
But why this propensity to give protection to the stranger, which is a dramatic expression of the human capacity for altruism? The ethicist, Peter Singer, provides a rationale in an essay entitled, “The Escalator of Reason.” Singer notes,
“Reason's capacity to take us where we did not expect to go could also lead to a curious diversion from what one might expect to be the straight line of evolution. We have evolved a capacity to reason because it helps us to survive and reproduce. But if reason is an escalator, then although the first part of the journey may help us to survive and reproduce, we may go further than we needed to go for this purpose alone. We may even end up somewhere that creates tension with other aspects of our nature. In this respect, there may, after all, be some validity in Kant's picture of tension between our capacity to reason, and what it may lead us to see as the right thing to do, and our more basic desires.”
“Our ability to reason can be a factor in leading us away from both arbitrary subjectivism and an uncritical acceptance of the values of our community. Reason makes it possible to see ourselves in this way because, by thinking about my place in the world, I am able to see that I am just one being among others, with interests and desires like others. I have a personal perspective on the world, from which my interests are at the front and center of the stage, the interests of my family and friends are close behind, and the interests of strangers are pushed to the back and sides. But reason enables me to see that others have similarly subjective perspectives, and that from 'the point of view of the universe' my perspective is no more privileged than theirs. Thus my ability to reason shows me the possibility of detaching myself from my own perspective and shows me what the universe might look like if I had no personal perspective.
“The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires. The most obvious such cause is the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is to be found. This may not be the only rationally grounded value, but it is the most immediate, pressing, and universally agreed upon one. We know from our experience that when pain and suffering are acute, all other values recede into the background. If we take the point of view of the universe, we can recognize the urgency of doing something about the pain and suffering of others...”
I agree with Singer that our capacity for reason enables us to step outside ourselves, and from a standpoint of objectivity appreciate the pain, suffering, and plight of others as we do our own.
But I would add to Singer's observation, our capacity for empathy. It is a capacity, which I believe is inborn, but like the emotions in general needs to be nurtured and educated. David Hume famously observed that it is the sentiments and passions that motivate our reason. Without emotions our reason may guide action, but it cannot propel us to act or assign moral value to one behavior or another.
The noted philosopher, Richard Rorty, appropriated this position when discussing the origin of human rights. There is a long tradition in the West, found in such thinkers as Plato and Immanuel Kant, that strives to identify a unique characteristic in human beings ensuring that we are worthy of protection and ultimately the possessor of rights. In other words, there is a special attribute that we possess that is absolute and stands outside of context or history. This attribute has long been identified as reason.
Rorty, as a postmodern philosopher, proclaims that this position is false. Post-Darwin, human beings cannot be said to possess any distinguishing aspects that stand independent of the kingdom of nature. Moreover, he notes that this strategy has never worked. The Nazis knew that the Jews among them possessed the capacity for reason, often to an advanced degree, yet it merely intensified their yen to torment and destroy them.
Rorty, following Hume, argues that the human rights culture emerges out of sentiment. We are inclined to protect those closest to us: our loved one's family, members of our clan, and tribe. Yet through sentiment we can widen that circle to include others who at first may be strangers to us. And storytelling, narrative, is among the most effective ways of conveying our sentiments. In a well-known essay on rationality, sentiment and human rights, Rorty asks the question, “Why should I care about a stranger, a person who is no kin to me...?”
Rorty abjures abstract responses. By contrast, he states,
“A better sort of answer is the sort of long, sad, sentimental story which begins, 'Because this is what it is like to be in her situation – to be far from home among strangers,' or 'Because her mother would grieve for her.' Such stories, repeated and varied over the centuries, have induced us, the rich, safe, powerful, people, to tolerate, even cherish, powerless people – people whose appearance or habits or beliefs at first seemed an insult to our own moral identity, or sense of the limits of permissible human variation”
Needless to say, such identification is not a guarantee that one will not be abused. But I believe Rorty is on to something. In years past, when I was active with Amnesty International, at fundraising dinners, after the last course those present would hear the testimonials of human rights victims, some survivors of torture. They told their stories first hand, which were always moving. I have long concluded that with regard to instilling a commitment to the human rights cause, such personal stories were worth a hundred academic lectures justifying human rights and the importance of working for their protection.
To my mind, the matter is not complicated. As a human being, I know intimately that I do not wish to be the object of gratuitous pain or an insult to my dignity. And as a product of what I refer to as “projective imagination,” I know that you, a fellow human being, do not wish to either. That realization becomes the basis for the creation of mechanisms to protect you, me, everyone from such violation. As such, it is the germ that spawns the creation of the human rights project.
When it comes to giving refuge to the stranger, that realization is being put to the test as never before. The United Nations estimates that more than 83 million people are displaced from their homes as a result of persecution and violence, and many are “climate refugees.” Among these, more than 26 million are refugees proper who have crossed into another country to seek safety. That's one out of every 96 human beings. This is the largest number in history and global resources are under great strain.
With the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to seek asylum was vouchsafed in the Declaration's article 14 as a human right. In 1951, the International Convention on Refugees provided the laws defining the qualifications for being a refugee and laying out the ways in which they must be treated. Refugees are those who are vetted by a prescribed agency, most often the United Nations, to ensure that they meet the criteria of the Convention. Asylum seekers are not so vetted but arrive on their own steam. They are also protected under the provisions of the Convention.
Over 140 nations have ratified the Refugee Convention and the United States has folded its provisions into our federal law through the Refugee Act of 1980.
Passing a law is one thing; abiding by it is another. The United States has generally had a good record of accepting refugees and resettling them, but our approach has always been subject to politics and not humanitarian concerns first and foremost as it should be. The red carpet has been rolled to Cubans fleeing the Castro regime. Haitians escaping horrendous oppression have been interdicted in mid-sea and turned back to their fate. Who receives political asylum has been notoriously uneven, reflecting a system which is severely overburdened and in many ways broken.
Donald Trump, contrary to law, virtually destroyed the asylum system and drastically reduced the number of refugees we would accept to historic lows. It is Biden's obligation to restore the process to where it needs to be. But the required resources are huge and the political winds are not favorable.
The acceptance of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing persecution, war and other forms of oppression and violence is a manifestation of the best that is in us writ large. It is tragic that politics has inhibited this impulse from being realized. There is much to be done and much to be repaired. If and when it is it will be a worthy testament to our humanity.
Well-stated case for accepting the stranger! - Jean Strickholm