No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.
Mahatma Gandhi 

Disclaimer: If I had the answers to the questions I’m about to pose, I’d undoubtedly have my own TED talk. I’d have written best-selling books, I’d be sought after as a guest speaker and globally regarded among the “truly wise.” But sadly (and understandably), I don’t. I do, however, think the questions are worth posing.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende echoes Gandhi’s words when she writes: Peace requires everyone to be in the circle—wholeness, inclusion. At face value, I suspect that many people would agree that inclusion is the remedy to most of what ails us today. They may agree with Gandhi that we threaten cultural extinction if we continue down the path of exclusion that we’ve been on. They may applaud Allende for her rallying cry to open up the metaphorical circle so that everyone stands in the center. But if pressed for the truth, they may sympathize more with the frank words of Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber:

If the quality of my Christianity lies in my ability to be more inclusive than the next pastor, things get tricky because I will always, always encounter people—intersex people, Republicans, criminals, Ann Coulter, etc.—whom I don’t want in the tent with me. Always. I only really want to be inclusive of some kinds of people and not of others. [Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Life of a Sinner Saint]

Ideally, we should always want everyone in the tent with us, right? And shouldn’t we be ashamed of the possibility that we really only want to be inclusive of some kinds of people? This is the question of the day–heck, this is the question of the ages. Beyond metaphor, beyond the ideal image of one tribe, one circle of humanity, how does this work? That is, how do we want to be inclusive of those we’d prefer to exclude, particularly–and perhaps most importantly–those whose attitudes and ideologies are so repugnant to us?

Consider this hypothetical scenario: A group of cake lovers and a group of pie lovers have been in conflict for decades. At best, they’ve coexisted in the shared industrial kitchen they call home. At worst, they’ve shunned, shamed, and even persecuted each other. Even after years of bake-offs, new laws, reconciliation efforts and educational campaigns, they’ve become increasingly intolerant of the other’s ideas, and many fear that civil war is brewing:

Cakes can’t sit beside pies on the dessert table, the pie lovers cry. Cake, as everyone knows, is an inferior food choice–at best less tasty, and at worst, seriously unhealthy. Anyone who advocates for their cause is woefully ignorant and potentially dangerous. If cakes are ever to join the dessert table at all, they must first reform the way they think and act (and they must learn to love, not merely accept, crust).

Are you serious? the cake lovers reply. Pie lovers have a history of discriminating against and persecuting cakes. They’ve built a culinary heritage on their refusal to give cake lovers their due rights. If anyone should be excluded from the dessert table, it’s pies. If they ever want a chance at the table, they’ll have to change their ideas and attitudes (and they must learn to love, not merely accept, frosting).

Although there are some cake lovers and some pie lovers who’ve come to accept and understand each other, others in each group argue that some is not enough, some will never be enough. It must be all. All must be welcomed to the dessert table. So how do you get all to agree to a bigger dessert table that includes a diverse smorgasbord of cakes and pies? Consider the following factions in each group:

• those who’ve come to truly understand and embrace the value and cultural necessity of a diverse dessert table
• those who like the idea of a diverse dessert table but who never actually venture down to the opposite end where the “other” desserts are housed
• those who tirelessly campaign for a diverse dessert table, but who ultimately can’t accept the opposing faction who refuses to reform (and conform)
• those who refuse to sample even a taste of the other’s fare, insisting on dessert purity (only cakes OR only pies)
• those who believe the culinary end justifies the means (cake lovers and pie lovers who devote their lives to destroying the opposition through any means available, including organized food fights)

How would you go about unifying all cake and pie factions, so that the dessert table was wholly inclusive? Consider the fact that dessert education has been moderately, but not wholly, successful in bringing more cakes and pies to the table. Culinary campaigns and new laws have had moderate success, too. As have the children and grandchildren of cake and pie lovers who’ve befriended and loved each other and who’ve risen to leadership positions in the dessert world. But nothing has been totally successful. In spite of all efforts, pockets of resistance have grown. And to make matters worse, some cake and pie lovers now confess that they really don’t want the vocal, ignorant faction of the other group on the table at all. Ever.

This is a silly, hypothetical conflict, but I fear that it’s all too reflective of conflict in general. The history of the world reads like a continuous series of conflicts: between nations and regions, tribes and sects, cultures and religions, races and ethnicities, social/economic classes and sexes–the list goes on and on.

According to ACLED ( Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project), there are ten serious conflicts to watch in 2020-21: the Sahel (Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, and Burkina Faso), Yemen, Mexico, India, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and the United States. To see our own nation included in this list is sobering. And this list is by no means exhaustive. There’s the Rohingya crisis and recent military coup in Myanmar, the ongoing oppression in North Korea, the Azerbaijani-Armenian war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflict between Turkey and armed Kurdish groups, the Somalian Civil War, the Israeli-Palistinian conflict, the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, the conflict in Ukraine, instability in Egypt and Venezuela, tensions in the East China Sea–just to name a few more. And these are the violent conflicts. When we consider other ideological, social, environmental, and economic conflicts that aren’t generally violent but are contentious nonetheless, we could fill pages.

So, back to the burning question: How do we achieve unity in a world which has been, and continues to be, in serious conflict? For example, how do staunch pro life and pro choice advocates come together in the same metaphorical tent? Pro life advocates defend life, but does this really include all lives, even those of pro choice advocates? Pro choice advocates defend choice, but does this really include all choices, even the choices of pro life advocates?

When individuals and groups are so ideologically different, when they oppose each other so vigorously, when acceptance seems so wrong because the opposing views are so wrong (or perhaps so evil as some have argued), how is unity, even unity in diversity, possible?

Ideologically, could it ever be possible? Could we ever reach consensus on all moral, political, social, economic, educational, spiritual, environmental, and cultural views? Could everyone–and I mean all–be snuggly included in the unity circle?

As I hear calls for unity, I can’t help but wonder what this really means. If I were a cynic, I could easily dismiss any vision of unity as impossibly naive. If I were a zealot, I could summarily condemn a vision of unity that includes any views other than my own. If I were a romantic, I could speak passionately about unity, optimistically choosing to ignore the real world. I’m neither cynic, nor zealot, nor romantic, though. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’d call myself. Maybe I’d call myself a seeker, one who has a whole lot of questions that I leave you with today.

Final disclaimer: For the record, I’d have a hard time excluding either cake or pie from my dessert table. A mile-high lemon meringue pie can certainly live in harmony beside a two-layer chocolate cake with buttercream frosting, right?