Back at school, I am once again surrounded by people I know, people I recognize, and people I have no idea who they are. If put in a police line up, I couldn't tell you they go to my school. And I'm not sure I care.
Part of the reason for my apathy is that there are so many people. How am I to know and care for all 2,500 undergrads? I doubt that such a feat is even possible, to care deeply for everyone. The quest then becomes whether we want quality or quantity. Whether we want 5 main friends or to 500 acquaintances.
But viewing the dilemma of association in this dichotomous way is exactly the problem.
When viewing other people, one necessarily categorizes them into "the other" as opposed to "the self." In order for them to be categorized at all, there has to be something recognizable in that "other." That is to say, there is some distinguishing quality that you are using to place people as "other" than you.
Let's take this farther. Sometimes people say that one language is "completely different" than another. But this is poor nomenclature. Why? Because there is no such thing as "completely different." If one language were truly "completely different" from another, you would be even unable to recognize it as language. There is a strand of commonality that must persist between unlike things in order for them to even reach comprehension within our minds. This is because we use what Kant calls determinative judgments, by which we place things into categories. These we are taught from a young age, learning that something that is black and white and says "Moo" is a cow. Something with pages and words arranged on the pages as sentences is a book. Something with rational capacities is a human.
When interacting with strangers, people you don't know, one has already acknowledges several similarities. That they are human, that they speak the same language, etc. What I am saying is that to acknowledge one as different, one must first acknowledge similarities. It is only through similarities that we can achieve understanding, because we understand that which we can relate to ourselves.
Thus, the question is not between 5 friends or 500 acquaintances. The dilemma of association involves the question of similarities and differences. As long as there is the similar characteristic of being a human, we can conceive and celebrate the differences in one another.
