I was very surprised when I heard Ronnie Dunn’s Bleed Red on the radio a few months ago. Country music (like most pop music) tends to produce mindless songs about sex. Take a look at country music’s current top 40 and you will find songs called Just a Kiss, Remind Me, Honey Bee,
and the top two candidates for the most mind numbing country songs of 2011: You and Tequila and Country Girl (Shake it For Me).
When I first heard Bleed Red, we at the Raven Foundation were just beginning to talk about our latest project called Be a Hero for Peace. My ears perked up as I listened to these lyrics:
Let’s say we’re sorry ‘fore it’s too late
Give forgiveness a chance
Turn the anger into water
Let it slip through our hands
Whoa. This is interesting. Then this:
If we’re fighting, we’re both losing
We’re just wasting our time
Because my scars, they are your scars
And your world is mine.
As 9/11/11 quickly approaches, I couldn’t help but hear this as a song for peace that promotes reconciliation with our enemies. You, me, Americans, Iraqis, British, and the Taliban, yes, we all bleed red. If we have the courage to take a look into the dark places of our individual and national souls, we will find much that we need to apologize for. When we do that difficult and painful work, we will discover that we stand in need of forgiveness, which will make forgiving others a little easier. We share a common humanity that connects us all together. Fighting is more than a waste of our time; it is counterproductive – in the end, we all lose. Indeed, we inflict the same scars, wounds, and death upon one another.
Emphasizing our common humanity is a good message and I applaud Dunn for having the courage to speak that truth. But it’s not enough. There is a dark side to our common humanity, and that dark side is what leads to conflicts. As mimetic theory claims, we humans “have an irresistible impulse to desire what others desire, in other words, to imitate the desires of others.” (Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 12) We hold desires in common, not because they arise spontaneously from within, but because they are given to us by others. When it comes to desire, we are never individuals; rather, we are interdividual.
Sharing common desires can lead us to become friends, but it can also lead us to become enemies. When we desire the same things, we can easily become competitors for that thing. The United States, for example, desires, and even proclaims to be, the most powerful nation in the world. The more we arrogantly desire to control the world’s affairs, the more others desire the same thing. We will use all the physical, verbal, and economic violence needed to maintain that control, while other countries become resentful of our presence. As Rene Girard claims about the West in general, “The West is going to exhaust itself in its fight against Islamic terrorism, which Western arrogance has undeniably kindled” (Battling to the End, 209-210).
Part of emphasizing our common humanity is emphasizing that we desire the same thing as our enemies. The US and the Taliban both desire autonomy, freedom, and security. And our methods to achieve those ends are exactly the same – violence.
The way forward, as Dunn says, is to “say we’re sorry ‘fore it’s too late. Give forgiveness a chance.”
