Does Paz “work”?

The other day, a student offered a very interesting objection to Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude.

He asked, “what if you like being part of a particular group?”

I think his objection was meant to suggest that people “like” their associations with particular groups, probably because of the strong sense of identity we get from them.

No doubt this is true. In fact, as a matter of political strategy, one might conclude that Paz’s “strategy” is completely ineffective. You can’t construct a political movement out of a “universal” identity like the one suggested by Paz’s category “alone.” People join movements because of “interests” they believe they share with those movements, and it seems that Paz’s urge for us to unite with all humanity doesn’t take that into account. His definition of “community”—a place where I can see myself in the other—seems to work better the more narrowly defined the community.

However, this failure to create a more universal community out of the move into the “labyrinth of solitude” seems to be the only way to avoid the kind of conflict we are seeing in Iraq right now. The divisions between Sunni, Shiah, and Kurd would be resolved best if the members of those communities could see themselves as part of a single community—but this seems unlikely at the moment.

Furthermore, I would really like to see America return to a greater sense of community. Paz would ask us how we can hope to solve any of our problems if we can’t have a real dialogue about them. It is our insistence on “winning,” (as opposed to “solving”) that seems to be driving our current political crises. We are facing tough issues—issues related to the war, security, the economy, immigration, corporations, the environment, etc.—and it seems counterproductive to approach these issues with the desire to win one for our side, rather than with the desire to do the best we can for all of us.