A classical education left me with three Greek and Latin phrases, two useful and one that initially appeared supremely irrelevant.
The phrases worth remembering are "There's nothing new under the sun" in Latin and "Know yourself" in Greek. The third phrase is also Greek and may have broader application than I used to think -- "The animals are running."
Indeed, all three phrases apply to America today.
In the category of "nothing new," is America's increasing diversity.
We started life as a prediminantly Protestant Anglo-Saxon country, but became more diverse even before the Revolutionary War had ended. And now we are told that by 2042 the U.S. will be a minority-majority country.
In other words, non-Hispanic White Americans will soon be in the minority. It's already true in several states and in a growing number of large cities.
Of course, that has raised alarms in some quarters, reflected in the current hysteria over immigration, mosque-building, and foreign-language signage. All of that also falls into the "nothing new" category.
Emma Lazarus to the contrary, many Americans have had misgivings about foreigners on our shores ever since boats docked from anywhere but England. Ben Franklin had truly obnoxious things to say about the Germans settling in Pennsylvania, the Brahmins of Boston considered the Irish a separate race, and California sold Chinese people at auction if they couldn't pay a monthly head tax.
On one level, such fear of people who are different reflects the animal instincts that still run through our genes. When our primordial ancestors dropped from the trees and started walking across the African savannah on two legs, survival favored those who had an innate ability to work in small groups, as well as a deep hostility towards anyone not of the group.
Those characteristics were so critical that, over a number of generations, they became the norm. And they survive to this day.
All of which suggests that the best way of dealing with diversity is not only to try to understand others, but also to understand ourselves. Or as my old Greek text put it, γνῶθι σαυτόν.
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