James Ron - Cosmopolitans Don't Kill Or Die for the Group, but they Have No Real Home

When you join the universalists, cosmopolitans, and exiles, you are freed from the straitjacket of nationalism. Everyone’s life is of equal value, and you don’t have to choose sides.

If you are not asked to kill or die for the group, can you still belong?

No one tells the cosmopolitan, “It’s us or them,” and no one asks the universalist to kill or die for the group.

But today, the rootlessness that once provided so much relief is now generating a gnawing sense of loneliness.

I can’t go back and no longer belong, but remaining emotionally homeless doesn’t seem quite right either.

I'm exploring this topic in a new book, chronicling my move from the US to Israel in 1976, and then my self-imposed exile from that country in 1993. I built up a fierce sense of belonging to Israel as a kid, and then in high school, the youth movement, and the military.

But then, working with the Associated Press and Human Rights Watch in the Palestinian-occupied territories began to destroy that sense of attachment.

I gradually got to know people from the expatriate peace-and-conflict world in the Israeli/Palestinian space, including charismatic Swiss delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross. I began to shed my sense of Israeli belonging, moving overseas for studies, and then building a career in the US, Canada, and then back in the US. But the new identity never really gelled. Now, as I approach the age of 60, I realize that I'm trapped, suspended in metaphorical mid-air over the Atlantic and Mediterranean, neither here nor there nor anywhere in between.

I know this is a common theme - displaced persons, exiles, immigrants, travelers - and that there is a whole literature on children who grow up in mixed cultural backgrounds (Third Culture Kids is the term I've seen). It's a new area of reading, writing, and research, and I'm working it all out in a memoir and my therapist's office. About James Ron

James Ron is an author and social scientist whose career has spanned military service, human rights investigations, journalism, and university teaching. He is working on a memoir, Azimuth, which reflects on a life lived at the intersection of political violence, moral responsibility, exile, and personal transformation.

Learn more at www.jamesron.com | www.jamesron.org | www.jamesron.net

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