Group identity badges

Jewish culture may have adopted some of their more puzzling laws (for example. not wearing mixed linen-and-wool clothing) based on an attempt to distinguish themselves from neighboring tribes. Choosing to wear distinctive clothing is fairly harmless, as cultural boundaries go. That requirement was a small part of a bigger picture, and even that requirement was presented as part of a moral code. In that context, how many people would come to wonder if the differences enhanced their own moral status, and how does that work out in the cultural mind, as time goes by? By the time of Jesus, Jewish prayers seem to have included thanking God for being born a Jew. By the around end of the first century -- with challenges to Jewish identity from Jewish monotheism going global under the banner of Jesus -- some Jews wanted to distinguish Judaism-without-Jesus from Judaism-with-Jesus, and added to their daily prayers a call for God to curse heretics (by which they meant followers of Jesus), calling on G-d for their destruction and damnation. And while the worship leader would be excused a verbal stumble at any point in the prayer, they came to insist that the prayer against heretics be said properly and without stumbling -- lest they find that their leader was in fact one of the heretics. So in some times and places it became a job requirement to use a prayer for cursing and/or verbal abuse. To be clear, my point is not that particular prayer so much as that particular mind-set. Christians are not immune to that kind of thinking, with some denominations requiring that their ministerial candidates must identify certain symbolic enemies of the faith (e.g. the anti-Christ) with either the teaching or leadership of another Christian group.

A boundary marker's purpose is to recognize a division or separation. In their most innocent form it's simply functional, something like a property line that keeps each side's place safe from the other. But not all markers are so friendly. They can institutionalize more than a boundary; they can institutionalize a sense of superiority or grievance, or they can be used to teach hatred. They can draw a line between "good people" and "bad people" -- or whether someone is eligible for a job -- by whether they are willing to participate in a hate-marker. In some groups, it is expected that someone should participate in standard verbal-abuse formulas of another group, or their own identity is suspect: their own acceptance or rejection is on the line.

The same thing happens outside of religious circles, too. Ever notice how former child stars so commonly do a nude photo-shoot or nude role before they have access to adult acting jobs? There seems to be a quiet job expectation that the actor should take an action that rejects ethical limits to sexuality and nudity. Hollywood somehow doesn't get called to account for its pedophilia problem, which seems closely related to the expectation that a former child star should join in violating the ethical norms meant to protect them. Participating in bashing others -- or in bashing certain social norms -- is sometimes a passport-stamp not only to certain social circles, but to the better jobs.

Every group has its boundary. The question on my mind today is: How many boundaries are maintained at someone else's expense?