Birds of a Feather

Hey, just found this. It's so good I've got to publish. Sorry.

Squawking, strutting, preening, assailing, fouling their own nests, "birds of a feather flock together."

My candidate for the most profound statement has changed. It used to be: "Ve grow too soon old, and too late schmart." But now it is: "Birds of a feather flock together."

We see it everywhere. Sitting in church one day I remarked to Louise how couples sitting in front of us all had their heads tilted alike, the influence of living together for numerous years. In church, in Kiwanis everyone seeks the same seat each week, the same companions, afraid to venture out and experience other members. Blacks congregate together in their own churches, and places of entertainment. The Country Club is the gathering place for those with wealth, interested in upward mobility. Milwaukee has its south side for the Polish, its third ward for the Italians, its suburbs to the north for the wealthy Caucasians. My YMCA Fitness Center is for the young professionals, all talking the same sports, the conversation never varying from this subject.

But what is the effect of this natural and pervasive tendency in human as well as animal society? I saw in the Free Enterprise luncheons sponsored by our local industries how absurd a group of intelligent people could become when without the checking observations necessary to hone to the truth, they came to advocate a system of laissez faire, condemning any government regulation, wiping out years of progress that have brought safe food, humane working conditions, abolition of child labor.

The church birds who flocked together enforced uniformity throughout the dark ages, blocking the advance of knowledge and discovery by scientists like Galileo, Copernicus, and later by Darwin whose findings are still disputed by the birds of fundamentalism. Motivated by the lust for power rather than than the holy spirit of creativity they were no better than those political leaders who maintain control by means of enforced conformity. But for the courage of those birds willing to seek their own course our world would still be flat, created literally in six days by an anthropomorphic God, the center of a universe where the sun and all the stars revolved around the earth. But for the little boy who cried "the emperor has no clothes" we would all be living in a continuing permanent dark age.

Birds of a feather together can be comfortable, secure, stable, but seen broadly with consideration of its effects it is a great sin. We are all called to venture forth, to seek and live with other flocks of birds to avoid the great sin and evils of conformity.

Henry Thoreau locked in the village jail house was visited by his good friend Emerson who called, "Henry, what are you doing in there." To which Henry replied, "Ralph, what are you doing out there?"