What is important is to look upon everyone with a deepGrimm. Have you seen it?
sense of honor, because your own heart and mind
are influenced by the way you look at others.
—Swami Muktananda
It's a new(ish) show on NBC—sort of Law and Order meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here's the gist if you haven't seen the show: A young homicide detective is visited by his dying aunt, who reveals to him that he is the last of a long line of Grimms whose family legacy it is to keep the world safe from the "monsters" who live among us, human-looking folks who have the souls—or at least the attributes—of spiders or bears or bees or badgers or wolves or other non-human animals and creatures. She leaves him a trailer full of old, hand-written volumes on these seemingly mythical creatures, and also with the ability to see beyond their human form to what they really are. As it turns out, he sees these folks A LOT in his work as a homicide detective—and they're not usually the victim. These non-human folk can do some pretty nasty things. There's more to it, but that's enough for my purposes here.
I have a love/hate relationship with the show. Well, more of a like/get-creeped-out relationship with it. And sometimes the show just downright bothers my spirit. It doesn't always affect me that way, and I really do like the idea of a whole world going on around us that we are unaware of. So it's taken me a long time to figure out just why it is that when it bothers me, it bothers me SOO very much.
And I think it boils down to this: I like my monsters to be human.
Let me explain. I am bothered by the notion that we can blame wrongdoing on the fact that the people guilty of the wrongdoing are somehow inherently “other” than human, and therefore fundamentally different from the rest of the population—namely, us. If the person who is mass murder, or an adulterer, or a petty thief, or a drug addict, or a jaywalker, or a [insert whatever behavior you deem questionable]—if these people are somehow less than (or other than) ourselves, we have no reason to feel compassion, to try to understand them, to want to help if possible, and to see their humanity beyond their misguided choices or unfortunate circumstances. Plus, we can sit smugly by, knowing they are not like us, and knowing we are not like them. That way, we don’t even have to acknowledge or deal with the less-than-perfect traits that come with our own humanity.
No doubt there is evil in the world. And no doubt people do some horrible things to one another. But consider this: Ted Bundy is a human being. Susan Smith is someone's daughter. Josh Powell is a child of God.
No situation is ever exactly the way it appears on the surface. Ever. Don’t get me wrong, these people have a lot to answer for. I believe in justice, and I believe in mercy. And I am ever-so-glad that with my imperfect understanding, I don't have to make decisions about how much of each should be doled out in any given situation.
What I do know is this: We do ourselves and our society a disservice when we decide to "other-ize" the monsters among us, or when we "monster-ize" the others among us. I think that’s the main reason Grimm bothers me so much from time to time. It’s the principle of the thing. Pop culture entities like this contribute to a society where we feel free to demonize our fellow human beings. That may not seem like such a big deal when we're talking about clearly evil deeds, but what happens when the freedom to demonize the "other" permeates society? Consider the prevalence of hate crimes against homosexuals or ethnic groups, of bullying at school and online, and even of spiteful rhetoric aimed at the opposing political party.
It often seems that if someone believes differently or acts differently or behaves differently, we feel free to simply dismiss them (at best) and hate them (at worst). Perhaps we wouldn't even recognize it as hate. Not really. But it's a lack of compassion—we don't understand them because they are not like us; therefore, they are not understandable and we don’t have to put any effort toward developing compassion and understanding for them. They are not “us.” They are “them.” They are the "other."
I happen to think the world could do with fewer divisions of "them" and "us." I much prefer a world of "we."
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