i’d love to change the world
but i don’t know what to do
(ten years after)

chicago is crazily, haphazardly blended. it’s not an idealistic can’t-we-all-just-get-along mixture. rather, the needs of millions of people have brought them to the same place — the peak of economic and cultural activity in the midwest.

more and more, i think that people who believe in complete racial equality are almost blindingly optimistic. it’s a human instinct to be suspicious of anyone different even on such a base level. we surround ourselves with similar herds, immediately based on interests but more largely based in socioeconomic divides. my friends are upper middle class, most with both parents. we’ve taken similar classes in school and spent much of our free time together, enjoying the same activities.

i am never completely at ease with these people because of an issue of personal values. if a group of ten white, middle-class, rural Illinoisans can’t get along, or even agree with one another’s opinions to a convincing degree, i don’t understand how can anyone expect all of humankind to “put their differences aside”. we cling to those in our lives with similar experiences so that we can have a constant comforting voice, and we also cling to those who are so different as to seem nearly novel to us.

chicago is technically one city, but there are countless neighborhoods and subsections, each with its own independent sense of pride. chinatown, greektown, wrigleyville, hyde park, the irish of the south side . . . the list could quite literally go on forever. if the entire urban sprawl of the “chicagoland area” is included, every issue is magnified exponentially — suburbs rich and poor, black and white, even those recognized as jewish.

people will continue to draw circles around themselves for eternity. even in the fertile crescent at the begining of the process of civilization, men and women outcasted from a group would form their own group. america’s initial puritan settlers left england because of their differences from the rest of the population, but they were the strictest conformists amongst themselves, eager to declare themselves the chosen people and kill or exile all who were different. now the twenty-first century has brought to us a lexicon of terminology to even further subdivide the masses.

closing remarks by paul mccartney.

life is very short
and there’s no time
for fussing and fighting, my friend
so i will ask you once again
try to see it my way
(the beatles)

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